Keeping a Secret
by gothicorca1895
Summary: When you spend your whole life believing a lie, the truth can have unexpected consequences...Sequel to "Long Shot." Please please review guys, I'm desperate. FINAL CHAPTER UP!
1. Shen's confession

_A/N - It's now time for me to write the really long author's note explaining how my weird fandom works._

_You see, all of my stories are based on a really long and complicated RP I did with Cryssy-miu, AKA Jordan. Jordan wrote a Kung Fu Panda fanfic called "Redeeming Light," which we sort of stuck to while we were RPing but didn't follow completely. As a result, all of the characters had the same names and same personalities between us two, but not all the same things happened to them…as you shall soon see._

_If you've never read Redeeming Light, I recommend it so that you can get the full story behind Shen's reformation. If you don't want to…well, you'll still UNDERSTAND this well enough, but it won't have nearly as much impact. Jordan's OC Kurisu will be used in this story. Even though this is the sequel to two of my fanfics, "If No One Will Listen" and "Long Shot", you can still understand this if you've read Jordan's but never mine, and vice versa. There will be heavy references to a oneshot she did called "Red and Green" as well as to Redeeming Light._

_And now that I have given all due credit and explained things to the newbies, you may enjoy "Keeping a Secret!"_

_DISCLAIMER: I don't own KFP and related stuff this chapter, I won't own them next chapter, and come the end of this fic I still won't own them._

_P.S. Please remember that every time you read without reviewing, sad baby Shen is neglected by his parents. Please think of sad baby Shen and review the story.  
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**Keeping a Secret**

_Chapter 1: Shen's confession_

"_Oh my heavens!"_

_When Prince Sheng Li heard that voice, he groaned loudly, glaring at the little black and white butterball that he was supposed to be watching. The fat baby panda was still blissfully splashing around in the spring, delighted with the mud mess that he'd created. This child was much more trouble than he was worth…_

_The baby's mother, a fully grown panda named Lady Biming, rushed to the side of the watering hole. "Our water source – it's all muddy!" she cried._

_Sheng Li – or Shen, as he was more commonly known and was soon to be known as forever, as he thought that "Lord Shen" had a rather nice ring to it – groaned again, really drawing out the noise of agitation. "This baby is IMPOSSIBLE…"_

"_Why are you playing in the drinking hole?" Biming demanded crossly._

"_We weren't playing!" Shen sputtered defensively. "He got all muddy and then he dragged me in!" It was rather embarrassing to admit that he'd been pushed around by a baby, but this particular baby probably weighed a hundred pounds already, and Shen had never been on the strong side._

_Biming's brows lifted curiously. "How did he get muddy?"_

"_He crawled out the back door and into the fields," Shen answered bitterly. The young albino peacock had been having quite the time trying to manage the pudgy baby today. Needless to say, it hadn't been a very good day for him. His parents, for some reason, were under the impression that they still had authority over a nineteen year old soon-to-be lord, and had dragged him off into this panda village to see their friends Lady Biming and Sir Cai. Lady Biming, it turned out, was the healer that Shen had hated as a child, as she'd always stuck him with acupuncture needles and filled his mouth with foul tasting potions. And just to top it all off, when the pandas had offered to show the royal peacocks their crops and rice paddies, his parents had volunteered Shen to watch this fat, troublesome baby. Obviously, it hadn't worked out very well._

_Lady Biming heaved an exasperated sigh, although whether at her son's antics or the prince's incompetence, Shen couldn't tell._

"_I'm very sorry about this, Lady Biming," he muttered as he climbed out of the spring. When he wrung out his silk robes, at least a bucketful of water splashed to the ground – his Nana was going to kill him. The finest silk in the city was now covered in mud and probably water damaged beyond repair._

_Biming smiled. "Oh, it's fine, My Prince. It's your first time, after all."_

"_Does the baby normally try to eat everything?" asked Shen._

_She chuckled. "Oh, you have no idea…"_

"_He even tried to eat me!" Shen's arm still felt unclean where the little panda had planted his dirty little mouth on it._

"_He's fond of nibbling feet and tummies." She laughed again. "Although maybe he just does that to tickle! At any rate, your parents have been looking for you…let me take him off your hands."_

_Biming reached into the watering hole and pulled out her sopping wet son, while Shen continued to squeeze out his robes and curse angrily under his breath. When the cub saw that Shen was planning to leave, however, he reached out towards the peacock, his eyes filled with tears._

"_Oh, WHAT?" shouted Shen, scowling at the baby, who promptly burst into tears._

"_Aww," cooed Biming. "He doesn't want you to leave…seems to love you quite a bit!"_

_Shen felt as if he'd just been struck in the chest by something very heavy. "Love me? Why would he?"_

_She shrugged. "Why wouldn't he?"_

"_Well, doesn't he sense that I'm a bad color, bad omen?" Something had begun to creep into the young lord's words…not hot anger but cold bitterness. "Babies are supposed to be perceptive. Every other child I've ever met has known that I'm not right."_

"_Not right? Oh, heavens!" Biming seemed genuinely startled by the notion. "It's a matter of what their parents teach them, dear…"_

"_Exactly!" Shen clenched his fists. "My own parents believe that I'm not right! Why shouldn't you as well?"_

_She gently set her son down on the ground and knelt down beside the peacock prince. "It isn't that your parents don't believe you're 'right'; it's that they worry for your health often. You are a bit weaker than the other peafowl, dear. But that doesn't mean you are any less significant."_

_Shen couldn't hold back – he snarled._

"_A bit weaker than the other peafowl! I've heard that my entire life, but I'm not a chick anymore! There's no more threat to my life! And I'm not any less significant? My parents don't give a damn about me unless I'm on death's door! They couldn't be bothered with raising me! If I had been normal, they would have, but heaven knows they can't spend time on a bad omen!"_

_Biming gaped at him in shock. She was clutching her chest, right over where her heart would be._

"_I didn't…I haven't been around…I didn't know how they treated you. Whenever I was around, you were little and very sick and they'd be loving and concerned…but I didn't…"_

_He saw tears in her eyes, and that further stung him; he was already sucking in ragged, angry breaths. And the baby seemed to have almost understood the conversation, as the fat butterball panda hugged Shen's feet, without sucking on them as he had done before._

_Following her son's example, and seeing that this peacock needed love, Lady Biming put her arms around Shen and held him. He didn't return the hug – he just stood there, panting and upset, wondering what had possessed him to say so much. Was it the child? Yes…it had to be the baby, his black and white fur that wasn't a bad color, bad omen, his sickly saccharine and adorable nature, and those heart-wrenchingly beautiful green eyes. Shen couldn't believe that he was so jealous of someone who wasn't even a year old yet. But the cub – Bao Yu, he was called – had something that even the prince didn't: a loving family. And Shen hated him for that._

_Those huge green eyes were going to haunt him for the rest of his life…_

Over thirty years later, the adult Shen woke with a start. For a second he was aware of nothing but the pounding of his heart, not even sure where or who or when he was. But gradually he was able to relax, as his surroundings became familiar to him once more.

He knew where he was: at the Jade Palace, the legendary home of the group of kung fu warriors known as the Furious Five; their teacher, the grandmaster named Shifu; and the infamous Dragon Warrior, who was really a giant panda named Po. It also happened to be the home of Shen and his adopted family, including a soothsayer who was his not only his nanny but pretty much his mother as well; a kitten named Kurisu, who was Po's foster sister and pretty much that for Shen too; and Xun, who had been Shen's best friend since the two of them were five. Shen had lived here for almost exactly three years, and it was the one place that he felt he really belonged.

He knew who he was, too: he was Master Sheng Li, once a certifiably insane warlord obsessed with conquering China, but now more focused on finding inner peace and trying to fix at least some of the damage he'd caused while he was crazy. He had involuntarily been set on his path to reformation when he kidnapped Kurisu in an attempt to lure the Furious Five and Dragon Warrior to him, seeking revenge since he had been defeated by the "warrior of black and white." Instead, the young girl had grown rather attached to him, and eventually vice versa. Once Shen had released the pain pent up inside of him, he had managed to find his redemption. A slight calamity had occurred in Gongmen City when it was discovered that he was alive, but had ended up saving the city from being crushed by a boulder, and was allowed to leave and be taken into the Valley of Peace. Now he was working on recollecting his shattered morality, only recently proving his dedication to the task when he had found Xun a couple of months ago. And he had been mostly forgiven…the key word being "mostly."

And he knew when he was: the morning after what was arguably one of the worst days of his life.

Shen sat up and stretched; he was stiff and achy, as it seemed that he hadn't slept well last night. Probably just proof that he was still shaken from yesterday's ordeal. The day had begun very badly, with an argument between him and Kurisu. She'd wanted him to tell her a story from his past, and he'd refused, saying that it was painful. She had responded by telling him to stop being so melodramatic and that he had barely even had a bad past, telling him, "Honestly, no wonder your parents never wanted to take care of you…" He had struck her across the face in uncontrolled rage, and when she ran off with a cry of, "I hate you," he had completely believed her.

Just to make things worse, though, bandits had swarmed into the merchants' village, and everyone in the Jade Palace had been called out to help. Kurisu, too distraught to fight, had sustained a stab wound. Shen had fearfully carried her home so that she could be treated, only to see her slip into the worst breakdown he'd ever seen from her, simply because she felt so guilty about what she'd said to him. He had desperately tried to comfort her and assure her that nothing was her fault, but nothing he could say would calm her. Eventually, she had cried herself to sleep, leaving Shen very, very shaken.

He had never seen Kurisu get so upset before. Despite the fact that she'd lost her entire real family in a massacre on her village when she was five, she was annoyingly cheerful most of the time. Seeing her wailing and mewling and clinging to him for dear life was enough to make him feel like he'd been repeatedly punched in the gut.

But now…it was the morning after. Kurisu would probably be fine once she woke up, but Shen had something rather unpleasant to do: admitting to Po that he'd slapped her.

Even three years after the attempted China takeover, the peacock and the panda still did not go in a room together. Shen remembered discussing it with Kurisu once.

"_You know, you've barely spent any time with your brother since I got here_," he'd pointed out.

"_Well, you know," _she'd replied uncomfortably. _"He still doesn't…"_

"…_like me?"_

"_It's not that he doesn't like you. He's just bummed that you, uh, killed his mom…"_

Shen released a short, huffing sigh at the memory. Now he had to tell Po about the fight with Kurisu yesterday, before he heard about it from someone else. That was going to be the mother of all awkward conversations…

To distract himself, he contemplated the not-quite-nightmare he'd had last night. Of course he'd expected to have nightmares after a day like yesterday, but why was he dreaming about Lady Biming, of all people? She was a personal friend of his parents and had been his healer when he was little; he'd pretty much hated her until he was much older, when he'd broken down in front of her...and when she'd saved the soothsayer's life. His heart seemed to become cold and heavy as he remembered the massacre on the panda village, cornering her in the forest –

No. He couldn't think about that. That was just going to make him even more nervous about the conversation he had to have with Po.

Taking a deep breath, he headed out of his room to find him.

Po was near the Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom, starting off his usual morning routine by practicing forms. Currently he was moving through his favorite inner peace moves, acting as if he was deflecting an imaginary, slow-motion cannonball. "Inner peace," he chanted, mimicking Master Shifu. "Inner peace…inner peace – oh!"

On the last "inner peace" he had swiveled around to find a familiar albino peacock standing beneath the tree, staring at him.

For a second, Po stood there frozen, bent into an odd position that didn't even look vaguely like a kung fu move; then slowly, he lowered his arms to his sides. "What are you looking at?" he mumbled, trying not to glare.

"Nothing," Shen replied evenly, doing that weird thing where he didn't look at Po's face. "I have to tell you something."

"Huh? Oh…" Suddenly Po remembered that something had happened to Kurisu yesterday, which had freaked Shen right out. "Is it about my sister? Is she okay?" he asked quickly.

Shen nodded. "Yes, to both questions. I just thought that you should know…" He sighed. "What happened in the first place."

"Well, I'm listening."

Shen heaved a silent sigh.

"Yesterday morning, Kurisu wanted me to tell her a story from my past, and I refused, telling her that it was too painful for me. She said that she'd told me a lot about her past, which was more painful, and that I was being overdramatic. 'I can see why your parents didn't want to take care of you,' she said."

Po's mouth gaped. He knew about the basic relationship between Shen and his parents, of course, and why it had caused Shen to go nuts. But he didn't know the whole story, because Shen was very touchy about it. How could his sister have said something like that?

"…and…I slapped her across the face…"

Shen braced himself to be hit or thrown against the tree, but no attack came. When he dared to open his eyes a bit, Po was only staring at him with an unreadable expression. He decided to continue. "Sh-she said that she hated me and ran off…but after she got stabbed during the raid yesterday , she had this huge horrible breakdown…I stayed with her, it was all I could do…"

Po didn't say anything, but Shen was still expecting to be lashed out at.

"…I suppose you're going to kill me now…"

Po turned away and raised his face to the sky. "I slapped her a couple times growing up," he admitted softly.

Shen exhaled. "Yes, well…this is me, and I figured you'd be looking for a way to pay me back…"

The panda shook his head. "You know we cleared the air long ago…" His face faltered. "Didn't we?"

"I never really felt like it…" Shen's head feathers had flattened now, and he was looking away, his shame apparent.

Po huffed. "Well, it's hard, Shen. What am I supposed to say? You killed my village…and my mother…things like that can't be easily forgotten…"

"I'm not asking you to forgive me," responded Shen. He raised his head and, for the first time, met his former enemy's eyes…and immediately felt a whomping blow of déjà vu.

Those eyes…bright green, huge and shining, still innocent after all this time…Shen had avoided looking into them for all the time that he'd been sane, and so he'd never realized how familiar they were. And they weren't just familiar because he and Po had known each other for three years; they were familiar because of something else, something from the distant past…

Shen's mind raced back to his dream, and he immediately raised a wing to his head, feeling dizzy. Po was…_Lady Biming's son?_ How – how was it possible? How was it possible that he hadn't realized it all this time? It had to be so, those green eyes were just too familiar –

"Uh, Shen, are you okay?"

"What?" Shen suddenly realized how odd he must look, reeling and gasping seemingly for no particular reason. "Oh, um…yes, I'm fine. I just…realized something." He just prayed that the panda wouldn't ask –

"Oh, really? What?"

Shen groaned, shutting his eyes. This really WAS the mother of all awkward conversations. "I-think-I-babysat-you-once-when-you-were-a-cub."

There was a very long pause. Then Po's voice, sounding stunned, asked, "…what?"

"I think I babysat you once when you were a cub, all right!" Shen opened his eyes in embarrassed irritation, only to find that Po was smiling.

"What?" he demanded, and the panda began to laugh.

"Sorry, I'm sorry! It's just that…well, you babysitting me, you have to admit that's pretty funny!" Po laughed again, and he looked so pleased by this coincidence that Shen had to crack a smile. Yes, this was definitely the same brat he'd almost failed at looking after, all right. They were both innocent, both oblivious to the things they didn't like, and both able to find humor in anything. And they both made Shen feel a pang of jealousy inside. How could anyone be that happy?

"So, how did that go?" Po bounced on his feet eagerly; this was one story that he wasn't dreading to hear.

"Well, if I can remember correctly…" Shen was glad that his sudden realization had lightened the mood rather than darkened it, although something unsaid was nastily gnawing away at his insides. "Our parents were friends, and they dragged me to your village for a visit one day. They went outside, to look at crops or something, and I was supposed to watch you. And you tried to eat me…twice. First you bit my arm, and then you crawled up my robe and started licking my stomach…"

Po had almost doubled over with laughter, and was wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. Shen rocked on his talons uncomfortably, but continued, his voice gaining confidence with every word. "When I went to go find your parents to see what was taking them so long, you crawled out the back door and got covered in mud. And you dragged me into the drinking hole afterwards. No one was very happy with me…"

"Oh man…" Po was still laughing, looking a little embarrassed now. "That's unbelievable."

"There. Wasn't that an awkward story?" said Shen.

"A funny one!" Po declared, still grinning broadly. "Man, I can't believe you never told anyone that before!"

"I didn't realize that you were…the cub I looked after…until just now." Shen was beginning to breathe rapidly. His realization had brought more than just a funny story to light. "There's…something else I should tell you."

"Hm?" Po was looking at him curiously, obviously wondering why the peacock wasn't enlightened by the joke. But Shen had darker matters on his mind.

Shen sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm himself down and failing. He wasn't sure if he should say this…but he had to. If there was even a sliver of a doubt about the connection between Po and the pudgy cub called Bao Yu…but he knew there wasn't. He thought about his dream, thought about everything Lady Biming had done for him, thought about that night that he and the wolves had raided the village of pandas…and…

"I didn't kill your mother."


	2. Questions and concerns

**Keeping a Secret**_  
Chapter 2: Questions and concerns_

For Po, it was like a bolt of lightning had just leaped out of the crisp autumn sky and zapped him squarely in the forehead. His head swirled, his knees felt weak and shaky, and adrenaline made his veins buzz as if they had suddenly filled with electricity.

_His mother…_

This was impossible. His mother was dead; he had known that for over three years. He had seen it, projected into his mind's eye like some horrifying shadow puppet show when the soothsayer had brought him into the abandoned panda village: his mother had attempted to save him from Shen and his wolf army. They had chased her into the forest, and she had run, clutching his little baby self tightly against her. Finally, she had known that she couldn't escape, and had put him in a radish basket about to be shipped out to the Valley of Peace. His last glimpse of her had been when she ran over the hill, attracting the attention of the torch-carrying wolves, while a bristling fan tail was all that was visible of the peacock warlord rushing towards her…

And now Shen was claiming that he hadn't killed her?

Po couldn't speak, and Shen didn't look like he was much better off. His crest was flattened as low as it could possibly go, and his chest was rapidly pulsating as he took near-hyperventilating breaths. But his eyes weren't closed. He was waiting to see Po's reaction…

Po blinked, coming to himself; he realized that his eyes were dewy and that nearly a minute had passed since anyone had spoken. He looked at Shen and opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

Finally, Shen turned away, his hands moving restlessly behind his back. "Do with that what you will, I suppose," he murmured.

"I…" Po sucked in a deep, shaky breath. "She…she's alive?"

"I don't know," answered Shen grimly, not turning around. "All I know is that I didn't kill her."

Po's heart felt all weird and fluttery. His shock wasn't dissolving at all, but a new sense of joy was moving into combat it. His mother…his mother was…she might be alive! He might not be an orphan after all! Of course, that was only if Shen was telling the truth…

"Why?" he asked, which was about all he could get out between the emotions threatening to burst from his heart. Fortunately, Shen understood well enough.

"Because she…she did something for me, and…" Shen was struggling to not bring up the issue that still haunted him to this day – the real reason why his hatred towards Lady Biming had been eradicated. "Lady Biming – your mother, I mean – was my…my parents' friend. She was a healer. When I was younger, she was always the one they called to take care of me when I was ill. But then she did this favor for me and I…just…I couldn't, all right!" he blurted, his fists squeezing shut, his eyes stinging as if he'd received a handful of grit in the face.

Po wiped his eyes. Maybe it was just because of his own desperate wish that this was true, but he was now certain that Shen wasn't lying. His mother – gods in heaven, his mother might be _alive _–

"I hope I haven't u-upset you…" Shen stammered, unable to look his former enemy in the eyes again; he kept himself turned towards the peach tree.

"No…" Po shook his head, feeling the unavoidable, stupidly large grin spread over his face. "You've said exactly what I wanted to hear."

And with that, he took off running towards the Jade Palace.

As for Shen, he stayed by the tree, shutting his eyes as he leaned against the trunk. Up until now, he had avoided thinking about Lady Biming and the fact that he had spared her. He had forced himself to believe the lie that she had been slaughtered, committing himself to the same mindset that everyone else had. She was just another aspect of his horrible guilt and indebtedness that he preferred not to dwell on.

She had had no reason to care for him…but she'd cared regardless. She had known him since long before Po (or was it Bao Yu, or did it really matter?) was born, when the heir to the throne of Gongmen City had been a newborn, sickly albino peachick with a very low chance of survival. But she had believed that he could exceed his initial life expectancy, if only he was given a little help, and had proven her commitment by diligently showing up week after month after year to fill him up with medicines. Sure enough, Shen had survived, and how had he repaid her? By killing her entire village and leaving her to cope with the pain. Wonderful.

But of course – he couldn't kid himself here – the reason he'd left her alive had nothing to do with the fact that she'd basically saved his life, although he certainly owed her for that. Even at age nineteen, he'd been glowering at her for making him swallow such foul-tasting powders and elixirs. No, the thing that had really made him feel like he needed to repay her had been the breakdown that he'd had a dream about…and the time, shortly after, when she'd saved his Nana.

He closed his eyes and allowed the memories to wash over him…

_The visit to the panda village had been the final straw. Shen was fed up with his parents treating him like a trophy. He had started experimenting with fireworks in order to prove his intelligence and make them proud, and plotted military conquests because he wanted them to see that he was useful; instead they took it as a sign of great darkness, the full realization of his status as a bad color, bad omen. And yet when they weren't saying both behind his back and to his face how he wasn't right, they were simply ignoring him. He had become their trophy: they would take him down and show him to their friends when it suited them, and then leave him up on a high shelf to gather dust the rest of the time. Well, no more. He'd had it with trying to live up to being a great lord; it was clear that he'd never amount to anything. It was time to run away for real._

_Ironically enough, it was raining the night he left, just like that one time when he and Xun had tried to run away when they were seven. This time, though, Shen was prepared. He'd expertly packed all of his supplies and personal possessions, and he wasn't in danger of collapsing just from a little rainwater anymore. After living in the Tower of the Sacred Flame for almost twenty years, it was easy enough for him to sneak out past the guards – on the rare instances that he was actually noticed by one, the wolves were happy enough to let him pass, as he made a point of being on good terms with them all. He walked through the dark, wet city with a lump in his throat, but he wouldn't cry; he hadn't cried since he was a chick, and he certainly wasn't going to now. This was something that he had to do…it was the only useful thing that he could contribute to Gongmen._

_And the soothsayer had come looking for him, of course. There was no way that she would have just let her baby walk out on her. She had gone hurrying through the rain, desperately calling him, feeling the cold weather bite into her aging bones (although this was before she'd had that walking stick), and this time, it had been her that had gotten sick. She had crumpled in the middle of the street, and Shen, who had been listening to her shouts for him with barely repressed tears, had noticed her sudden silence. Fearing the worst, he'd gone back to find her…and the worst was exactly what he'd seen._

_She was so sick that he'd literally had to carry her back to the palace, and she didn't get any better once she was warm and dry inside. Shen was no doctor, but he could tell by the sound of her breathing that she had pneumonia, perhaps because he himself had suffered through the illness so many times before. His parents had sent for Lady Biming, and then he'd had an awful fight with his father about the reason why he'd run away…and then…_

_Shen had just been getting to leave again – his travel pack was slung over his shoulder and he was almost through the door – when Lady Biming approached him. "My Prince, your Nana may have little time left…" she whispered in a strained voice._

"_You don't have to tell me!" Shen could barely prevent himself from breaking. "She will die and it will be my fault! It will be my fault for running away, for causing trouble, for being BORN! I already know!"_

"_Darling, I was just going to ask you if you wanted to say goodbye…" She was just as upset as he was. Of course, the soothsayer was her old friend. "If my medicines don't work, she may be gone by morning…"_

"_Then I'll be gone by morning as well…" The young prince's face had contorted awfully as he tried to keep in the tears. "It's not as if anyone will want to see me again. Tell her I said goodbye. And tell her I'm sorry for being s-such a monster that I c-c-can't f-f-feel l-lov…"_

_Biming strode forward and wrapped her arms around him, and she didn't allow him to pull away._

"_You are no different from anyone else," she said firmly. "You feel love, you feel pain – pain especially – and you are not a bad omen. I don't know what on earth your parents were thinking, treating you with such neglect…you did not deserve it."_

"_Yes I did…" Shen mumbled hoarsely. It was taking all of his willpower for him not to bury into her like a child. Being pressed this close to her, he could smell that she carried the aroma of potent herbal tea and growing things – nothing like the way his Nana smelled, but not unpleasant either._

"_No, you did not," she contradicted gently, smoothing his feathers. "If I had known what was happening…if I could have stopped it…and don't hold back your tears, darling…"_

"_Tears accomplish nothing! Crying gives you nothing but puffy eyes and a wet face!" Shen nearly screamed._

"_Tears cleanse; mourning cleanses!" she cried. "Please do not deny yourself tears, and release your pain…"_

"_Crying doesn't make things magically better!" He was shivering violently in her arms now, and it was clear that anger was the only thing keeping him from breaking down completely. "It just…it just reminds you that things won't ever be okay!"_

"_They will be if you give them a chance!" Lady Biming insisted, breathing heavily._

"_They will NOT!" Shen tore himself away from her, every feather on his body bristling. "Nana will die, my parents won't love me, and I will continue to bring pain to everyone simply because I exist! Well, I'm done with all of this! I already know that no one has ever wanted me, and I don't know why they continue to pretend! I'll leave since that will make them happy! You're all free to pretend that I was never here!"_

_At that moment, the soothsayer whimpered in her near-comatose state, a hoof reaching in the air for her child._

_Tears were rolling down Biming's face. "Your Nana needs you, Shen!"_

"_She doesn't need me! I've done nothing but hurt her!"_

"_Please…" The panda was begging him now, pleading for him to do this not for his own sake, but for the soothsayer's. "If you leave, she WILL die. You are why she is holding on…"_

"_W-why…" He swallowed hard. "Would she hold on…for me…"_

"_Because…" Biming took a deep breath and finally spoke out loud the words that everyone at the Tower of the Sacred Flame had always known, but never wanted to admit: "Because you're her son."_

"Um, Shen? Are you okay?"

Shen jerked. He realized that he had momentarily dozed off while leaning against the peach tree, and turned around to find Xun studying him with some concern. Xun – otherwise known as the wolf boss formerly at the head of Shen's army – had been best friends with the peacock since the two of them were five, and they had been reunited at the Jade Palace only recently. Xun didn't normally worry about Shen much, but he'd seen some of the events of yesterday and knew that his friend was probably pretty shaken up.

"I'm alright," Shen sighed. "Just thinking too hard, that's all."

Xun's ears perked up in curiosity. "What's going on?"

Shen scrutinized his face. The wolf certainly didn't look like someone who had just learned of a shocking truth about a dead person who might not really be dead after all – which meant that Po hadn't spread the word about what Shen had told him. One thing to be grateful about, anyway. "It's nothing. Don't worry about it."

"Well, if you're sure…" Xun looked uncertain. "I mean, I know you were upset about what happened yesterday…which reminds me, Kurisu is looking for you."

Shen brightened a bit. Perhaps it would cheer him up to know that his itty bitty kitty was all right again.

Down at the Jade Palace, everything seemed to be progressing normally. Po was nowhere to be seen, but training was going on as usual and no one seemed remarkably shocked about everything. Shen struggled to act is if everything was just the usual with him, as well. As usual, no one paid him any mind…except for the kitten that suddenly leaped on his back, hugging his neck hard enough choke him.

"Oh – !" Shen staggered under the sudden onset of weight, craning his head in order to see his unexpected passenger. "Was that really necessary, itty bitty kitty?"

"Yes," giggled Kurisu, happily nuzzling against his feathers. She appeared to be in a perfectly good mood today; Shen relaxed. That was one less thing to worry about.

She pouted a little as he detached her from him, but quickly began to bounce on her feet eagerly. "Come train with me!" she demanded enthusiastically.

"The healer said you aren't supposed to be training yet," he warned. "You still have that nasty stab wound…" His eyes moved uncomfortably to the spot on her stomach where the bandage would be, but it was blocked by her shirt.

"Oh, come on! Just a little! We can do some sparring!"

Shen smiled weakly. "Maybe later, all right? I don't think I'm up to it at the moment…"

Kurisu squinted at him suspiciously. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing…"

She huffed. "You and Po are both acting weird today. Are you guys keeping a secret or something?"

You have no idea, he thought wryly. "If we were, we wouldn't be able to tell you because then it wouldn't be a secret anymore…"

Kurisu stuck out her tongue and marched off to find someone else who would train with her.

The rest of the day passed without incident. Shen didn't even see Po again until dinner, where the panda seemed jumpy and excited and oddly quiet for him. The two of them didn't acknowledge each other, but that came as a surprise to no one. Everyone knew that after all this time, they still didn't mix…

Shen didn't realize that what he had admitted had spawned unexpected consequences until much later that night.

He was in his room, beginning his nightly meditations and really starting to feel calm for the first time that day, when Kurisu threw the door open. She was limping, her injury hindering her physical movements, but there was a look of utmost determination on her face as she approached him. He opened his eyes, a bit irritated, and looked at her coolly. "What is it?"

"Po's gone!"

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_A/N - Uh, guys? Reviews? Reviews would be nice._


	3. Unintended results

**Keeping a Secret**_  
Chapter 3: Unintended results_

"What do you MEAN Po is gone?"

Shen leapt to his feet as if he'd suddenly realized that he'd been sitting on a needle. Kurisu scampered towards him as fast as she could, her limp rather pronounced.

"I mean he LEFT!" she shouted, her voice rising fretfully. "I just ran into him outside! He had a travel pack and everything!"

"He wouldn't leave! Where would he g – " Shen's feathers flattened as horrible realization washed over him. He groaned loudly. He had been such an idiot not to expect this…

"He said he was going to find his MOM!" Kurisu sputtered. "I think my brother's lost his mind!"

"No, he hasn't," Shen contradicted tensely. Gods in heaven, what had he caused here? "He's not as crazy as you might think, Kurisu…she might not be dead."

Kurisu froze, her round blue eyes becoming even rounder. "What?" she said flatly.

"I guess everyone is going to know this now…" He heaved a sigh. "I didn't kill Po's mother."

"WHAT?" Kurisu shrieked, her whiskers twitching furiously.

"I couldn't, okay!" he snapped, feeling a bit sore from talking about this so many times.

She shook her head in utter disbelief. "I don't get it!"

"What's not to get?" Well, okay, maybe a lot, but still…

"I mean – that's great, but whaaaaaat?"

"A few weeks before…you-know-what…she saved Nana's life." Shen clamped his beak shut, clearly conveying the message that he wasn't going to explain the matter any further. "But that's the least of our problems right now. Po has gone to find her – and no one has any idea where she might be, if she's still alive, that is. What do we do now?"

"We go after him!" Kurisu declared fiercely.

Shen hesitated. He remembered Po's words earlier that morning – _"You've said exactly what I wanted to hear" _– and knew that the panda wouldn't be thrilled to find out that his little sister and his former worst enemy were following him to the reunion he was wishing for. But Shen also felt a bit like he had when he'd come across Xun for the first time, so many months ago. An opportunity for him to repay his debt a little bit more had just presented itself, and wouldn't taking it be the right thing to do? Especially for a mistake as huge as what he'd done to Lady Biming…

The peacock and the panda had never really cleared the air. Would successfully finding Po's mother change all of that?

"All right, we'll go after him," Shen submitted. "Just give me a few minutes to get ready."

As Kurisu hurriedly limped out, probably to throw together her own travel pack, Shen scrounged up a cloth bag and shoved two spare robes and plenty of nonperishable food supplies into it. After a moment's consideration, he found some of his spare knives and carefully added them to the arsenal already in his sleeves. Since officially "reforming," he hadn't kept nearly as many blades at his disposal, but he thought that it might be necessary to replenish his old supply right now, in case they ran into trouble on the way to…wherever they were going. It made his stomach twist uncomfortably to do so, as if he were becoming a villain all over again and heading into battle, but he reminded himself that this little excursion might just be for the better.

There was only one more thing he could think of to do. Barely stopping to take a breath, he headed to his Nana's room.

The soothsayer had just been getting ready to change into her sleeping robe when Shen burst through the door, looking like a vicious creature was chasing him. "Nana!" he cried.

"Goodness, dear!" she exclaimed worriedly. "What on earth is happening?"

"Nana, I'm leaving for…a while," he said breathlessly. His face was grim.

"Wh…what?" Grabbing her walking stick, she got to her feet, certain that she must have heard him incorrectly.

"Remember when you told me that I'd find a way to right my wrongs? Well, I think I might have found that way. I have to help Po…find his mother."

The soothsayer stared at him. Her chick had been acting oddly all day…she had attributed it to stress from Kurisu's breakdown yesterday, but how could his mind have gotten so muddled that he'd forgotten who was dead and who wasn't? "You killed her, dear…along with everyone else."

"No, you don't understand. His mother is Lady Biming."

She clapped a hoof to her mouth. _Lady Biming? _Her old friend, the preferred healer of the royal family, and constant doctor to Shen when he was a child? She remembered something from long ago, Shen flying into a rage because he'd been forced to babysit "Lady Biming's bratty son"…but that son was Po?

She pursed her lips, realizing that she'd never seen the cub, so she would have had no idea if there was any resemblance between them. Still, she should have seen that one coming.

"All right, so Po's mother is Lady Biming." The soothsayer shook her head. "What does that have to do with her being alive?"

Shen took a deep breath, although this confession didn't have the same impact now that he was saying it for the third time. "I didn't kill Lady Biming."

The soothsayer dropped her walking stick in shock, and the clatter it made as it hit the floor seemed loud enough to wake the whole Jade Palace. Shen hurriedly retrieved it and handed it back to her; his nanny gripped her cane weakly and did nothing but continue to stare at him, rather dazed.

"Now do you see why I have to leave?" he said softly, making a beeline for his travel bag.

She took a deep breath and nodded briskly. "Give me time to pack."

"What?" Shen looked at her as if she had just made an astounding confession. "No, Nana, you're not coming…"

She reached up and grabbed one of his head feathers, twisting it as she sharply yanked him down to her eye level. "Oh yes I am!"

"OWW!" Shen yelped, tugging away from her. "Why?"

"Because Lady Biming was my friend, that's why! And since she is alive – "

"We don't know if she's alive or not. Po ran off looking for her, and Kurisu and I are following him. We don't even have the slightest idea of where we're going!"

"You're letting Kurisu go?" the soothsayer demanded crossly, ignoring his remarks about uncertainty if Lady Biming was still alive and her location. "But the poor kitten is injured!"

"It was her idea to leave – Po is her brother, after all. Besides, if I told her that she had to stay, she would just sneak out." Shen stifled an eye roll as he recalled a time, when Kurisu had still been "captured" at Dao-ming Temple, when the troublesome cat had run off during to see a festival in Gongmen City and come very close to getting herself killed. He was all too familiar with the way her devious little brain operated after this long; she would be safest if he was there protecting her.

The soothsayer grudgingly admitted that this was probably true and began to gather supplies. Shen made a few more attempts to dissuade her from coming, but to no avail. And people wondered where he got his stubbornness from…

By the time they were ready to leave, Kurisu was already waiting out on the steps to the Jade Palace, hissing with impatience. "You're late!" she whispered to Shen angrily.

"I'm sorry, but Nana decided to come!" he whispered back.

The soothsayer trotted over to the kitten whom she had long considered to be her other child. "Are you feeling all right, dear?" she asked worriedly.

"I'm fine!" Kurisu was rocking on her heels, clearly anxious to get going. "I can't believe that Po would do this! He's such an idiot sometimes!"

"Let me carry you, Kurisu – you're still limping," Shen told her, and she obediently clambered into his arms. He began to carefully make his way down the stairs, and the soothsayer followed behind him. In this formation, the three of them silently made their way out of the Jade Palace and into the unknown night.

They headed towards the borders of the Valley of Peace, and for a long time no one even attempted to start a conversation. Finally, Kurisu asked, "Where do you think he would have gone?"

Shen considered the question carefully before responding. After all, Po didn't know where Lady Biming would be if she was alive, and neither did they. But if he was forced to choose a location…

"I'd guess towards Gongmen," he finally answered.

"Oh, you mean, towards the old panda village?" Kurisu guessed. "Is that before or after Gongmen City?"

"It was on the borders," Shen replied vaguely; after all, he'd only been there once.

"Do you think it's still there? Did you leave any other pandas surviving, besides her?"

"I have no idea, it's not like I personally killed every one of them!" Shen wiped his hands on his robe compulsively, as if the old blood had suddenly reappeared and stained his feathers. "Besides, Nana said that the village is deserted."

"It was," the soothsayer agreed, recalling when she had brought Po to the crumbling abandoned homes so that he could discover the truth about his origins. "If she is still living…well, she could be anywhere."

"This is hopeless," muttered Shen. "Let's just hope that we can catch up to Po before he gets completely lost."

As they slipped into silence again, Shen began to uncomfortably recollect the night that he had slaughtered the village of pandas, falling into a sort of half-dreaming flashback. As with many of his old memories, everything he saw in his mind's eye was tinged with red and oddly disjointed from the rest of him; it was as if he was watching the bloody antics of someone else, who just so happened to look exactly like him…

_Shen was smiling coldly as he watched the wolves run rampant throughout the village; it was his equivalent of watching children prance on a playground. The screams, the wails, the desperate pleas for help as smoke and blood turned the night red all did nothing but fodder his enthusiasm. He was exhilarated, filled with giddy, insane happiness…nothing could ruin this moment –_

"_Lord Shen!" Xun was calling to him from the edge of the forest, pointing between the trees with alarm. "They're getting away! I saw some go that way!"_

_Shen snarled, motioning to a few nearby wolves. They quickly gathered around him as he shouted to Xun, "Stay here and make sure that you get them all – I'll bring these dogs into the forest!" And with his small group of subordinates about him, he took off in hot pursuit._

_The escaping pandas had split up, so Shen split his group up, too – three wolves to the left, three wolves to the right, and he and the remaining two wolves pressing ahead. He was still smiling disturbingly as he began the chase. An unearthly, fiery glow was pulsating behind him, more beautiful to him than all the fireworks in the world. The village would burn to the ground and there would be no more warrior of black and white…_

_They spotted a panda running ahead of them with some difficulty; she was clutching a bundle to her chest. Smirking, Shen pointed to her, and the wolves sprang forward. He watched with glee as they snapped at her, flaring into anger in an instant when she dodged them. She ran over the crest of a hill and vanished from sight._

"_GO!" Shen yelled at the wolves, and they charged towards the hill at full speed with him following only slightly behind._

_A few seconds later, though, the female panda came back up over the slope, despondently waving her arms to get their attention. She was – giving herself up!_

_Shen could have hooted with glee and he dashed up to meet his soldiers. But his undiluted euphoria only lasted until he got a little closer and could see that the female panda was none other than…Lady Biming._

_She fell to her knees as the wolves encircled her, and gazed up at the peacock in mortification and terror when he approached. "Shen," she sobbed. "Why are you doing this?"_

"_If I don't, then I'll never be a worthy ruler, because the 'warrior of black and white' will defeat me!" he hissed. "And that's Lord Shen to you, peasant!"_

"_You know that isn't true!" she cried. "You don't have to do this, Shen. You – you can stop this madness!"_

_Shen glared at her, but there was more than just venom in his eyes. Lady Biming could see that there was pain, roiling pain trapped inside of him, that had turned to insanity because he would not give it an outlet. "Please listen to me," she begged. "I know you're in there, Shen…I know you are…"_

_Shen whipped out his halberd and pointed it at her throat. She winced, but it wasn't touching her yet._

"_How do I know that it's not you?" he whispered, a thousand different emotions battling on his face._

"_I w-would n-n-never hurt you, Shen," she whimpered. "You know that…"_

_Shen couldn't believe that he was frozen like this. He had to get this over with…he had to be strong…he swung his halberd towards her, and the flat end of the blade whacked her in the side of the head. She crumpled to the ground in an unconscious heap, blood leaking from the injury. But she wasn't dead yet…_

_He continued to hold out his weapon, steeling himself for the final blow…but he couldn't do it. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make himself kill Lady Biming._

"_Leave her here," he ordered, abruptly turning away._

_The two wolves looked at each other in confusion. "Huh? But, Lord Shen…" one started._

"_I said leave her here!" Shen screamed, turning his blade towards them. They immediately flinched, cowering and tucking their tails between their legs._

_He began marching back towards the decimated village, and the two wolves followed, not one of them noticing the crying butterball baby in a radish basket at the bottom of the hill…_

"Shen? Shen? Earth to Shen!" suddenly fingers were being snapped in his face.

"Wha…?" Shen shook his head vigorously, then looked down at the kitten in his arms, who was frowning. "Oh, I'm sorry, Kurisu. What is it?"

"You totally zoned out!" she declared. "And I think I hear someone coming…"

Shen, mentally slapping himself out of the past, strained his ears. Sure enough, if he listened hard enough, he could detect that there was a rustling moving through the forest, coming closer and closer…

He gripped Kurisu protectively and stepped towards his Nana. "We're not alone in here," he whispered.

That was when they saw the wolf, seemingly straight out of Shen's memory, as he lunged towards them.

* * *

_A/N - Guys. I work very hard to give you chapters of decent length and extremely fast updates. The least you cold do is review._


	4. Coming along for the ride

**Keeping a Secret**

_Chapter 4: Coming along for the ride_

Shen didn't waste any time. Shoving his Nana and the kitten behind him, he drew one of the blades from his robe, now grateful that he was so well-armed, and flung it towards the wolf – who yelped in a very familiar voice and ducked just in time.

Shen's wings dropped to his sides. "Xun?" he exclaimed.

Xun glowered as he looked up at Shen, his hands still clapped over his head, a distinctly pouty look in his eyes. "Geez, planning to stab me again, huh? My chest still hasn't recovered from that other time…"

The peacock exhaled roughly and pulled his friend to his feet. "I'm sorry, Xun, but you scared us! You can't just sneak up on people wandering around in a creepy forest and not expect that they'll assume the worst!"

"Good point," agreed Xun. "Except I really had to know…why are you even out here?"

Shen hesitated. On one hand, Xun was his best friend and had a right to know what was going on; on the other hand, the last thing they needed was for half of the Jade Palace residents to be wandering around looking for someone who might or might not have been alive. He looked over his shoulder at the soothsayer and Kurisu, who both looked as bewildered and relieved as he felt. "Should we tell him?" he asked.

"I dunno…" started Kurisu uncertainly.

"We may as well," sighed the soothsayer. "You and I both know, Shen, that Xun will pester us endlessly until we do."

Shen turned to Xun again. He was smirking, silently confirming the old goat's every word.

"Fine," Shen groaned. "Listen, Xun. Do you remember a panda named Lady Biming?"

"Hmm…" The wolf scrunched his eye shut, thinking hard. "No, name doesn't ring a…oh! I know who you're talking about! She was a healer, wasn't she?"

"That's the one."

"I only knew her from the few times I came to see you when you were sick…" Xun's eye seemed to mist over with pleasant nostalgia as he recalled his childhood, growing up alongside Shen. "She was really nice, wasn't she? Sort of an 'everybody's mom' type person, if I remember right. But…what does she have to do with you guys wandering around in the woods in the middle of the night? I mean, wouldn't she have died when you…uh…"

"There's two things you need to know about Lady Biming," Shen cut him off, sounding much calmer than he felt. "The first, she's Po's mother. The second…she might not be dead."

Xun's ears became rigidly upright, and he gaped at Shen with an expression that the peacock was becoming all too familiar with. "H…huh?" he stammered.

And so Shen heaved a sigh and went through the whole story again, this time with his own personal audience; he was well aware that his Nana and the kitten were hanging on to his every word, as well as Xun. He explained about being forced to babysit the young cub called Bao Yu and breaking down in front of Lady Biming, recounted how he had attempted to run away from Gongmen City and inadvertently caused the soothsayer to catch pneumonia, and retold how he had opened his heart to Biming a second time and how she had convinced him to stay at the Tower of the Sacred Flame and see his Nana through. Finally, he reached by far the most difficult part – the invasion of the panda village. All he said about it, though, was that when he'd had her cornered and at his mercy, he still hadn't been able to kill her…so to the best of his knowledge, she had survived.

"Wow," said Xun simply, into the void of silence that followed this account.

By now, all four of them had settled down into sitting positions on the ground. The moon was past the peak of the sky; it was clearly quite late. "We should stop for the night," the soothsayer suggested tentatively.

"But we have to catch up with Po!" Kurisu protested.

"He's probably already stopped for a rest by now." Shen's shoulders swelled as he sighed silently. "We'd might as well sleep; we've got a long day ahead of us. Xun, I assume there's no point in trying to convince you to go home?"

"Not a chance, bird brain," replied the wolf with a small smile. "We're friends; we're going to see this out as friends."

"I'm not tiiiired!" Kurisu whined, crossing her arms.

Shen rolled his eyes. "That's because I've been carrying you. Let's go, itty bitty kitty; it's bedtime."

They found a clearing where they could set up camp, and arranged some very misshapen beds out of some spare blankets that the soothsayer and Kurisu had brought. They ended up having to sleep very close together, and the cramped arrangement didn't make for the most comfortable night they'd every spent. But everyone was tired from the long trek and they all slept like logs…except for Shen.

The night wore on, and Shen found his eyes unwilling to close; he lay flat on his back, listening to Xun's snores and Kurisu's sleeping mutters, and wondered what he had gotten himself into. More importantly, what had he gotten everyone else into? Tomorrow morning, Master Shifu and the Furious Five would be waking up to find that five residents of the Jade Palace had seemingly disappeared without a trace, and for what? A wild goose chase that was going to get them nowhere fast. To be fair, he didn't blame Po for running off – if Shen had heard that one of his parents was alive, he probably would have done the same thing. But trying to find Lady Biming seemed even less distinct than chasing the moon. At least with the moon, you knew where it was and that it was there at all.

On top of that, if they DID manage to find her, what would Shen say to her? How did you greet someone whose village you had ruthlessly murdered? How could you EVER make that any better?

Eventually, he did doze off, but he was the only one of the group who slept restlessly and thrashed his way through nightmare after nightmare. He was tired but relieved when the soothsayer shook him awake the next morning and told him that it was time to leave.

"So, where do we start looking?" asked Xun as the four of them continued their steady march onward, munching on chunks of bread (a satisfying if rather bland breakfast).

Shen squinted at the landscape ahead of him. The forest was thinning fast, which meant that they had long since left the Valley of Peace behind. "It looks like there's a village up ahead of us," he told them, pointing it out.

"Maybe we should ask if anyone knows her," said the soothsayer.

"Or if anyone has seen Po come through here," Xun contributed. "A giant panda that just so happens to be a famous kung fu warrior is probably pretty hard to miss."

Shen wasn't convinced that just walking up and asking people about random pandas was the best thing to do, especially since they would be getting closer to Gongmen over the next couple of days, and civilians would be more and more likely to recognize him. But they didn't have any better plan of action, and for the time being they were far away from the city, so they headed into the village and approached the cart of a pig vendor.

"Excuse me, sir!" said Shen in what he hoped was a polite tone of voice, taking the lead as everyone gathered around the cart.

"How can I help you?" asked the pig nonchalantly, adjusting his wares so that the group could get a better view of what he was selling, but they weren't there for loaves of bread and bean buns.

"This is going to be an odd question, but…" Shen took a deep breath. "We're looking for someone, and we were wondering if you know if she lives around here or not. Do you know anything about a panda named Lady Biming?"

"Lady Biming? Hmm…" The pig rubbed his dual chins, then announced, "Name rings a bell."

The foursome looked at each other excitedly, and Kurisu exclaimed, "Do you know where she is?"

The pig frowned. "I'm sorry, I don't. She knows a lot in medicine, I heard. I think my wife may know her…"

Groaning inwardly, Shen asked, "Do you think your wife could help us?"

"I bet she would. She's on the other side of town right now…she'll be the one in the green dress."

Shen thanked the pig for his trouble, and Xun, who had brought some yuan with him, purchased a bean bun as a way of showing their gratitude. The vendor waved after them cheerfully as they headed off again.

They managed to find the pig wife relatively quickly, and again Shen came up to her and asked her if she knew or had ever heard of a panda called Lady Biming, making sure to add that they had been referred to her by her husband.

"Oh, yes!" exclaimed the pig wife, who was busily buying vegetables outside of a shop. "I've heard of her, and even seen her a few times."

Shen, Xun, Kurisu, and the soothsayer all exchanged an eager four-way glance; if they had an actual eyewitness, then Lady Biming was almost certainly alive and somewhere in the area. "Do you know where she lives?" Shen asked, a bit too forcefully.

"Uh…no, not really," answered the pig wife uncomfortably, giving him an odd look.

The group heaved a sigh in almost perfect unison.

"I'm pretty sure my friend does, though. She's in the next village over…"

That was how their day was spent: running all over the place, from village to village, asking over and over again if anyone knew the location of Lady Biming. They had the same conversation a thousand times: the person they talked to had seen the panda once or twice before, didn't know where she lived, and referred them to a friend who allegedly possessed that knowledge. They only stopped once, for a fast lunch of all the goodies Xun had bought from helpful vendors; then they were on the move again, still endlessly chasing leads around in circles. By sunset, everyone was exhausted, frazzled, and had very sore feet. Shen had long since started carrying Kurisu again.

Just before dark, they came to the house of a bunny artisan who they had only lately been referred to. Shen wearily knocked on the door, and when the rabbit answered, he explained tiredly who they were and what they were looking for.

Surprisingly, the first thing the bunny said was, "Oh, are you all from the Jade Palace?"

"Er…yes," admitted Shen, glancing back at the others in puzzlement. "How on earth did you know that?"

"Because today at work the Dragon Warrior came up to me and asked the same question."

"The Dragon Warrior!" Shen might have smiled if he'd had the capacity for it. "We're following him, actually."

"Well then, I'll tell you what I told him…" The bunny pointed in a southeasterly direction. "Lady Biming lives in a village just that way. I'm not sure exactly where, but she's apparently a very famous healer, so I'm sure anyone in town would be able to tell you."

Kurisu let out a whoop of excitement that earned her quite a few curious stares; the bunny children inside the house were just barely being held back by their mother.

"Never mind her," said Shen hurriedly, giving the kitten a look. "It's just been a long day, that's all. I think we're all excited that we've finally found what we're looking for. Thank you very much, sir."

"It's no trouble at all," the bunny assured them. "You have a nice night, now."

When they walked away from the house, it seemed that everyone except Shen wanted to immediately press ahead to the village. "Oh, come on!" he complained. "It's already dark out, and we're all quite tired! There's no rush to get there, Lady Biming will still be there tomorrow…"

Although everything he said was true, Shen was simply trying to delay what was sure to be an awkward meeting…if Biming was even there, of course. They'd been tossed from place to place so much today that even this fairly solid lead seemed doubtful.

"We can rest when we get there!" declared Kurisu, squirming in his arms. "I wanna find my brother and kick his butt all the way back to the Jade Palace!"

"This is what we've been waiting for," agreed the soothsayer. "Granted, the journey was tiring, but it will be worth it when we see Biming again…"

"We've been going around in circles all day," Xun pointed out, his ears twitching with anticipation. "You aren't going to stop just when we get close, do you?..."

And so, outnumbered, Shen had no choice but to comply with them and force his aching feet to carry him to one last village. This was a humbler, poorer place; the denizens seemed to be mostly subsistence farmers, and almost all of the buildings looked run down. They approached it from the far side, so their first glimpse of it was a few cottages set in small fields, all of which had their lights out except for one. A single cottage had illuminated windows, looking cozy and cheery in the otherwise dark night.

As they passed this cottage, hoping to go into town and find someone who was still awake to direct them to Lady Biming, a very familiar voice resounded from the inside, loud enough for them to hear…

"…anyway, once we got to the temple place, I was sure I was gonna find that Kurisu had been…you know, tortured or something, but actually, it turned out she had her own room and she was playing with…"

Kurisu, whose ears had perked up immediately at the mention of her name, whispered, "It's Po!"

"Sounds like it," Shen whispered back, shifting her in his sore arms (it was hard not to whisper when you were in the middle of a sleeping village and technically eavesdropping on someone else's conversation).

Everyone strained their ears, hoping to catch another fragment of Po's voice, but instead they heard a woman speaking. She was much quieter, so they couldn't make out the words, but Shen's eyes widened at the sound of it. He looked towards his Nana, and her face mirrored the exact emotions he felt. He hadn't been mistaken…that voice was…

"Lady Biming?" Xun guessed quietly, who hadn't been around her enough to recognize her voice but would have had to be blind in both eyes to miss his friend's reaction to it.

"Look in the window," Kurisu told Shen, nudging him.

"What? N-no…I can't do that…" the peacock stammered.

"Just a peek! Just to see if it's really her!"

Heaving a sigh, Shen set the kitten on her feet and silently made his way over to the cottage. Staying pressed against the wall, he apprehensively craned his neck so that he could see through the little window…

"Well?" demanded Xun, after nearly a minute had passed with Shen still staring at the window, seemingly frozen.

He looked back at them with utter, unbridled shock in his red eyes.

"It's her."


	5. Lady Biming

**Keeping a Secret**

_Chapter 5: Lady Biming_

In the valley at the foot of a large snowy mountain was nestled a small village, which was about a two day journey away from Gongmen City. It was a modest settlement, and nearly everyone there was a farmer. There was no river or sea close by, so being a merchant wasn't profitable; they rarely saw travelers, so anyone who tried to maintain a shop or take up artisan crafts was soon bankrupt and humiliated. The entire population consisted of only a few dozen people, who were all meshed together in one big, close-knit family. But not everyone was a part of that family.

On the outskirts of the village lived a rather sad, lonely woman called Lady Biming. Almost everyone knew her – she was a healer, and a very good one at that, so everyone had been treated by her at one time or another. Whenever she had company, she was always very affectionate and motherly, bustling about and making sure that her sick or injured guests had enough bandages and pillows and medicine. But no one really knew anything ABOUT her, except for the fact that whenever she was on her own (which was often, seeing that she lived alone) she was prone to gazing sadly in the direction of Gongmen City, often for minutes at a time, before continuing to plant seeds or harvest or whatever it was that she had been doing.

There were many rumors about why this was so. Lady Biming was a panda, and it was whispered around the town that she had lost her entire family in the massacre insinuated by Lord Shen, decades and decades ago. Indeed, the time at which she had settled down in the village and the fact that no family or friends ever came to visit her certainly confirmed this.

On a day-to-day basis, Biming always tried not to dwell on her past and focus on the fact that she had a decent life now. She spent her days farming and tending to the occasional patient, desperately trying to make small talk to make them stay as long as possible; she was a sociable person and disliked being alone. She wanted to be optimistic, but it was hard for her. She did have one hope that had kept her going for this long, which she attempted not to think about too often but unleashed into her mind when she really needed it.

One crisp afternoon in late fall, she was busily harvesting crops before her precious food supply was devastated by the upcoming frosts when someone came to the edge of her property.

"Um, excuse me, ma'am!" called a voice.

"Yes?" Biming called back, turning in the direction from which the shout had come. A large figure was standing over by the fence; between the bright sunlight, the distance, and the fact that her eyes were going, she couldn't see it too well.

The figure – Po, of course – also couldn't really see her yet. "Um, this is really awkward, but I've been walking around all day trying to find my mom," he began, fidgeting with his hands. "Someone told me that she lived here. Do you know if there are any pandas in this village?"

Biming took a few steps forward, gazing at him blankly. Once he saw her, Po could have hit himself for being such a blabbering idiot. "Oh, sorry! You ARE a panda. I, um…that was kind of stupid of me…" He tried to smile, awkwardly rubbing at the back of his neck.

Biming came forward more, her eyes squinting. She didn't say anything.

"Uh, sorry if that was really awkward," said Po, certain that he was blushing furiously under his fur. He stepped back from the fence. "I guess I could leave now if I'm making you uncomfortable…"

Biming was practically right in front of him now, scrutinizing him with an unreadable expression on her face. "What is your mother's name?" she finally asked.

Po bit his lip, not wanting to admit that he didn't really know what his mother's name was. When he had asked people about her whereabouts today, he had always just asked if there were any pandas around, knowing that there couldn't be many left and his search would be narrowed down significantly. He struggled to remember his conversation with Shen yesterday; had a name been mentioned?

For once, his brain seemed to listen to his desires and gave him the answer. He could practically hear the peacock saying, _"Lady Biming…your mother, I mean…"_

"I think it's…Lady Biming," Po said carefully. "I'm not positive, though…"

Biming inhaled sharply.

"So…do you know her?" Po asked hopefully, after a few seconds of silence had passed.

That was when he noticed that the lady in front of him had visible tears in her eyes. "Darling…" she whispered.

For the second time, Po felt like he'd just been struck by a random bolt of lightning. Once again, his head was spinning, his legs were shaking, and his veins were buzzing, but something more than adrenaline had overtaken him. He was filled to the brim with pure shock…and pure happiness.

"M…Mom?..."

Biming raised her hand almost unconsciously and placed it on his cheek. She had steady, gentle hands, firm and trained from years and years of healing practice. "Little Bao Yu?" she murmured.

Po, who was having a rather hard time getting his brain to process this, stammered, "M…my name is Po…"

"So that's what you're called now…" She smiled tearfully, visible streaks in the fur beneath her eyes. "I heard you were adopted…i-is that right?"

"Yeah…" He blinked several times, but his eyes refused to stop seeing her – she was really there. Now that he knew who she was, her appearance seemed to match up perfectly with the sweet mother he had hazy memories of. Why hadn't he recognized her before. "M-Mom...is that really you?"

Instead of replying, she threw her arms around him.

And suddenly Po wasn't rigid with shock anymore. A million different emotions were flooding through him, joy and relief and others he couldn't name, and tears were spilling out of his eyes, and he was clinging to his mother…_his mother_…oh gods, he really HAD found his mother!...

"Mama…!" He buried his face in her shoulder as a torrent of long-forgotten memories broke free from his mind, all unlocked by her voice, her smell, the sensation of her holding him close. Po had grown up loved, but only by an adoptive father. Today was the first time in decades that he'd been given maternal affection, and now that he knew what he had been missing, he never wanted to let her go.

"My baby," Biming sobbed softly, clutching him against her. Po buried into her affectionate caresses, feeling like he had gone back in time and turned into a child again. Both mother and son were sobbing now.

"You're alive – ! I thought…!" But Po didn't finish saying what he'd thought, because he didn't care about it anymore. He didn't care about anything, except for the fact that his mother was _alive_.

"And you're the _Dragon Warrior_…my little baby…!" Biming could hardly believe that her so-called "little baby" was taller than she was now, and that he was even here at all. How had he found her? For the past few years she had been hearing rumors of the Dragon Warrior and how he had saved China, and ever since she'd learned that this Dragon Warrior was a giant panda, a flame of desperate hope had been ignited inside of her. She had tried to extinguish that fire before it burned her heart out – the odds of that panda being her long-lost son were slim to none – but here he was now…

Po wasn't sure how long the two of them stood out there, refusing to let go of each other, before he started to feel a chill that not even his mother's warm arms could eradicate completely. "C-can I come in?" he asked shakily, wiping his eyes on the back of his arm.

Biming stretched herself upwards in order to kiss his forehead. "Of course, love," she said, and gripping one of his paws in both of her own, she led him inside.

Biming's cottage was a rather small one, with a first floor and a sort of loft hanging above it that served as a makeshift second floor. It was tidy, but not so compulsively neat that it didn't feel lived-in; there was a comfortable clutter on the kitchen table and on top of a large wooden chest in one corner. As Po looked around, he couldn't help but think of his distant memories of his parents' house back in the panda village; even though he knew this was an entirely different place, and an entirely different time, the atmosphere around him seemed to be the same.

His mother had taken out a handkerchief and was dabbing at her eyes in a very dignified way. "Oh, I certainly wasn't expecting anything like this to happen today…" she sniffled. "This place is a mess, I do hope you'll be comfortable…let me make some tea, and start up a nice fire…"

Po couldn't help but chuckle at how mom-ish she had suddenly become. "I can cook something for us, if you want," he offered.

"That would be wonderful, darling…I seem to recall I heard somewhere that you were quite the chef." She poked him lightly in the stomach, smiling tearfully. "Probably quite the eater, too!"

Po returned her smile, but something in her words stood out to him. "You heard somewhere that I was a good cook?" he repeated. "H…how would you know that?"

"Oh…well…" Biming heaved a sigh. "For years I've been hearing rumors about the Dragon Warrior. Even all the way out here, you're well known…"

"But how did you know I was the Dragon Warrior?"

"I…" She smiled again, faintly. "I had a feeling."

Po nodded, figuring that it was probably some sort of magic mom instinct. He remembered how at home, Shen had often complained about how the soothsayer always seemed to know where he was and what he was doing at any time. Po had once pointed out that this was probably because she could see the future, and the peacock had dismissively replied, _"Of course not. It's because she's pretty much my mother – she's got eyes in the back of her head." _Thinking of Shen made his happiness slip a notch, though. What was his mother going to think when he told her how he'd managed to find her?...

"So…you knew where I was?" he asked.

"Heavens, no!" Biming shook her head vigorously. "I heard rumors, but I had no idea where you resided. If I did, then I would have come looking for you. As it is I searched every village from here to Gongmen City. But…" She looked down at her swollen legs and rubbed them absently. "I have not been able to travel far…"

Po hugged her again, more gently this time. "It's okay," he assured her. "I would have come sooner, except I thought you were dead…"

"No…" The ghost of old fear temporarily flickered over her face. "I was the only one spared."

He sucked in a deep breath – it was best to get this over with sooner rather than later. "I only came here after Shen told me that you might be alive."

As soon as she heard that name, every muscle in her body tensed, and the ghost of fear seemed to momentarily become a living entity. Po quickly changed the subject by saying, "Ah…we've got a lot to catch up on. Why don't I make us some soup, and then we can, you know…just talk?"

Biming exhaled, and the shaky smile returned to her face. "Of course."

Po headed over to her kitchen – it was smaller than the one in his father's restaurant, but at least he could stand upright in it, seeing as how it had been built for a panda in the first place. He efficiently gathered up vegetables and noodles and set a pot of water on the stove to boil; making noodle soup was something that he didn't even have to think about doing anymore. "So, you first, Mom," he started. "Tell me how you ended up here."

Biming took a seat at the kitchen table (it had four chairs around it for the rare occasions that she had a patient stay for a meal) and carefully replied, "How much do you know?"

"I know what happened…that night." Po tried his hardest to concentrate on dicing carrots, but it was such a mindless task that flashbacks kept flickering at the edges of his brain, threatening to overtake him. "I know that our village got attacked and you ran away, and you put me in a radish basket to save me, and that you…apparently were spared." He cleared his throat. "But I don't know any more than that."

Biming toyed with frayed threads dangling from the end of her worn robe, and it was a while before she spoke.

"After…he…attacked me," she finally began, "I woke up in the forest…I suppose I was knocked out. I had a large gash in the side of my head, but otherwise I was unharmed. I must have had a concussion, though, because I couldn't stand or walk very well. Eventually, though, I managed to drag myself back down to the bottom of the hill where I had left you…but the produce cart was gone. I must have been out for longer than I thought.

"It took me nearly a full day to get back to the village, and when I got there, I found that my efforts had been for nothing. There was nothing left. Everything had been burned to the ground and everyone was gone. I was all alone.

"I was terrified of returning to Gongmen, and so after I had tended to my own wound as best I could, I began the harsh trip out of the province. By the time I reached this village, I was on the verge of collapsing, and a very kind family of rabbits allowed me to stay with them while I recovered and built a house of my own to live in. In return, I healed their youngest son, who was sick with pneumonia and had been given up on by every other physician. I settled down here and have been the healer of this village ever since."

Po, who was by now stirring the pot of soup, couldn't think of anything to say. Eventually he asked, "Do you like it here?"

"It's lonely," said Biming, trying to hide the fact that she was dabbing at her eyes again.

"Well, I'm here now," he said reassuringly, ladling their meal into two bowls he found sitting on the counter. He handed her the first bowl and sat across from her with the second clasped in his paws, smiling. "Try some of my secret ingredient soup – it'll warm you up inside, make you feel better."

"What's the secret?" she asked.

Po grinned. "Nothing. To make something special, you just have to believe it's special."

Biming chuckled, which was refreshing to see. "Wise guy, eh?"

"My dad came up with it!" he protested jokingly, then quickly added, "My adoptive dad, I mean."

"That's wonderful, dear." Biming took a small sip of her soup, smiling when the taste spread across her tongue. "Oh, you ARE quite the cook, aren't you?"

"Glad you like it," he said happily as he began to slurp away.

It was several minutes before Biming spoke up again with, "It's your turn, dear – why don't you tell me what you've been up to all these years?"

Po swallowed, set his empty bowl down on the table with a loud thunk, and swiped an arm across the back of his mouth. "Well, that's a really long story."

"I'm up for it if you are."

"All right, then…hmm…" Po pressed his lips together thoughtfully as he decided where to begin. Then he announced, "That radish crate you put me in got shipped off to the Valley of Peace, and I was adopted by a goose named Mr. Ping when he found me on the street. He's my dad now, and he owns a noodle shop. He always wanted me to take over the restaurant for him, but I was an awful waiter and I didn't really want to. I'd always loved kung fu and I dreamed about being a warrior and fighting with the Furious Five…" His face lit up as he remembered this old dream and the roundabout way that it had come true. "I didn't want to disappoint my dad, though. But one day, there was an announcement that there was gonna be a tournament to choose the Dragon Warrior at the Jade Palace…"

And so the story unfolded, Po becoming more and more animated as he retold everything, gesturing wildly with his hands in imitations of kung fu moves that made his mother laugh. He explained about being chosen as the Dragon Warrior in a supposed accident and at first being humiliated by the Furious Five and Master Shifu, but eventually being trained once Tai Lung escaped from present. He recounted his battle with the infamous villain, enthusiastically reenacting his signature line of, "ska-doosh", and then launched into being faced with Lord Shen (Biming tensed again, but attempted not to show it) and how he had discovered his true origins. He talked about Kurisu, how her village had been destroyed and how he had gotten her as a little sister. By the time he reached what he knew of Shen's reformation, and the formerly villainous peacock coming to live at the Jade Palace, they had each had two bowls of soup and it was quite dark outside.

When the story was finished at last, Biming sat there blinking rapidly, quite lost for words. "Well now," she said. "I knew a few things, like the part where you saved China, but…"

"I think that's just about everything else," said Po, stacking their dishes so that he could take them back over to the counter.

"And who's this…Kurisu?" she asked, leaning forward on the table.

"I'm this Kurisu," responded a very familiar voice from behind Po.

Po spun around. Sure enough, there was Kurisu, her fuzzy blue ears flattened and a distinctly not-amused expression on her scrunched-up kitten face. "Little sis?" he cried.

But Kurisu wasn't alone.

Standing behind her, with his wings on her shoulders as if he was trying to hold her back and an expression of utter mortification on his face, was Shen.


	6. Monsters don't cry

**Keeping a Secret**

_Chapter 6: Monsters don't cry_

Shen had become a veteran of extremely awkward moments. Between conversations with Xun, Po, and the occasional random traveler who recognized him as an insane warlord, he had weathered many agitated silences and uncomfortable discussion topics. But being caught sneaking into the cottage of two people whose lives he had destroyed _on the same day_ didn't just feel like an awkward moment. It felt like the awkward moment that all other awkward moments aspired to be as awkward as.

Kurisu had dashed into the house as soon as she had heard that both her brother and Lady Biming were inside, completely ignoring the fact that sneaking into another person's home was not the most legal thing in the world to do. Shen had followed hurriedly, grabbing her and trying to pull her back, but it was too late – she'd already made her presence known. And now both pandas had risen to their feet and were gaping at their unexpected visitors. Po was giving Kurisu a semi-glare, but Lady Biming wasn't even paying attention to the kitten…her eyes were locked on Shen in complete, paralyzed terror.

The funny thing was, he was pretty sure that he had the same expression on his face as he stared back at her.

"What are you DOING here?" Po demanded, crouching down so that he could look into Kurisu's eyes while he semi-glared at her.

"What are YOU doing here?" she shot back angrily, crossing her arms.

"Um, I came here to find my mom! What, did you and Shen follow me?" Po's green eyes lifted to the peacock, and Shen's head feathers flattened completely. He was too shell-shocked to explain his logic at the moment.

"Not just them," another voice tentatively remarked, and Shen swiveled around sharply to find that Xun and the soothsayer were standing behind him. Good gods in the heavens and hell, was everyone trying to make a trend of breaking and entering?

Po stared at the foursome as if they were a bunch of party-crashers who were ruining his birthday, which wasn't too far from the truth. "This was SUPPOSED to be PRIVATE!" he proclaimed.

Shen's voice finally decided to start working, although it was dull and conducted every bit of the apprehension that he felt. "As long as we're here…Nana, you should go say hello. I'm going back outside."

He stood and walked out briskly, not turning back to look at Lady Biming, whose eyes were still frozen on him in fear. After a moment's consideration, Xun followed his friend, realizing that the head of the army that had destroyed the panda village probably wasn't any more welcome than Shen.

Kurisu tried to go after them, but Po grabbed her arm and hissed, "Kurisu, don't be rude!"

"But they are…" she pointed out with some confusion.

Po released a short, huffing breath. Kurisu and Shen had been inseparable for the past two and a half years or so, and while this was normally a good thing because it meant that Po didn't have to be troubled with looking after his little sister, right now it was just inconvenient. "Shen is kind of…not wanted at the moment. Come on, I want you to meet my mom!"

Kurisu hesitantly followed her brother over to the other side of the table, where the soothsayer had already trotted over to excitedly greet Lady Biming. Biming was only just beginning to snap herself out of her panic, and was returning her old friend's greetings with smiles that looked shaken and slightly fake. "Mom, this is Kurisu…my little sister," Po announced.

Biming took a look at Kurisu and blinked. "She's…a cat."

"Duly noted, ma'am!" snapped Kurisu, her ears flattening even further. Po elbowed her in the side.

"And our dad's a goose," he pointed out. "You find that strange?"

"Oh, no, I shouldn't," Biming answered hurriedly. "After all, family has never been restricted between species…" She smiled at the kitten, returning to her normal, motherly self, and Kurisu had the decency to offer a small, genuine smile in return.

"This is where you've been this whole time, Biming?" asked the soothsayer, gazing around her at the plain but cheerful cottage. "Just two days away from us, and we didn't even realize it."

"I wish I had known, Min Yun," agreed Biming.

Po's brow furrowed, but just as he prepared to ask the obvious question, Kurisu nudged him and whispered, "Min Yun is Nana's name."

"Oh," he replied quietly. He had never much thought about the soothsayer having a name, but then again, everyone had to have a name, didn't they?

"It seems quite lonely out here, though," said the soothsayer offhandedly.

Biming sighed. "Lonely really is the best way to describe it," she concurred sadly.

"Well…" Po couldn't stand to see his mother's eyes grow all sad, so he enthusiastically contributed, "Maybe you can come home with us!"

"I…" Biming hesitated.

Suddenly feeling foolish, he hastily added, "If…if you want to." The thought of his mother staying here had never occurred to him; but then again, she had a home and a career in this village, and it wasn't his right to take her away from that.

"Oh, darling, that's not what I meant." She sighed and came forward, gently kissing his forehead again. "I do want to come with you, but…you have a family there. I can't impose…"

"Mom, you're not imposing!" Po sounded appalled at that very train of thought. "Everyone that came here today isn't even half of our supremely weird family. You can be a part of it! And you're already part of MY family…you're my mom."

"Isn't…isn't he there, though?" Biming asked softly.

"Who?"

Her eyes darted towards the window before they lowered, flickering with fear. "Him…"

"Oh…" Po exhaled, finally realizing that she meant Shen. Of course she'd be afraid of him; she'd seen him go psychotic and murder her entire village. But he was struck by a sudden idea: hadn't she known him before then? Po could clearly recall Shen saying that Biming had done something for him when he'd attempted to explain why he had spared her, and also remembered a mention of "our parents were friends" during the babysitting story. He'd meant to ask his mother about this, but it had slipped his mind; of course, judging by her reactions now, it probably would have upset her, and that was the last thing he wanted.

All he could say was, "He won't bother you, mom."

"He's changed!" Kurisu contributed, also having realized who they were talking about.

Biming still looked rather uncertain.

"Please…" Po gripped her hand. "I don't wanna lose you again…"

"I…I'm not sure, Bao – Po," she quickly corrected herself. "I'll have to think about it."

He nodded, realizing that that was going to be the best answer that he got right now. "I guess we'll have to stay overnight in the village, then."

"That won't be a problem." Now Biming was smiling again. "I've got plenty of extra beds. I am a healer, after all."

Po grinned. "Awesome! But, uh…" His bright green eyes darted towards the door. "Would you excuse me for a moment, Mom? I think there's something I need to take care of…"

It was quite cold outside; the wind had picked up, and Shen felt it bite into his skin, effortlessly slicing through the covering of his feathers and robe. He tried to keep from shivering, but it wasn't easy. Xun was more or less fine; after all, the wolf had a thick coating of fur to keep him warm. But his keen eye noticed how cold his friend was. For the past ten minutes, he had been trying to convince the peacock to go back inside.

"I'm not w-welcome there," Shen was insisting, his beak chattering. "Besides, I'm f-f-fine…"

"Shen, you know you'll get sick if you stay out here in the cold," Xun contradicted.

"Then I d-d-deserve it," Shen replied bitterly. "I don't b-belong in there." Shen had managed to somewhat fix one thing, by indirectly leading Po back to his mother, but some things he couldn't change. Biming was always going to be afraid of him, and she had a right to be.

"Excuse me, Shen," a new voice interrupted.

Shen jerked around on his talons, only to find the last person he expected to want to talk to him – Po. He went rigid, and his eyes seemed to have forgotten how to blink. He didn't say anything.

"I need to talk to you," said Po carefully, making a gesture to show that they should go around the side of the house and away from Xun's prying ears.

Shen silently obliged and followed the panda, shivering in his thin hemp robe, and they both pressed close to the cottage wall to avoid the worst of the wind chill. "First of all," Po began, "Why did you follow me?"

"Because Kurisu was going to follow you and I couldn't let her go on her own." Shen rubbed his shoulders, trying to make his blood flow faster. "Everyone else sort of…followed us."

"But how did you know I was going to find my mom?"

"I'm not stupid." Shen sighed, and his breath formed a slight steam in front of him. "I should have expected that this would happen when I told you. I would have reacted the same way."

Po paused, and it was obvious that he was struggling for a way to make the subject change he was about to inflict more seamless. "So…" Finally deciding to just run with it, he asked, "I know that you knew my mom before…that. How?"

"You really want to know?" Shen's crest flattened. "Apart from me babysitting you, she was my healer when I was a child. If she hadn't treated me, I most likely would have died during infancy. And when I was older, she was one of the only people that understood my resentment towards my parents. But she knew I was a monster." He abruptly turned away, his voice ringing with an ancient ache. "She always knew."

Po wanted to say, _"My mom would never think you were a monster," _but he couldn't, for the simple reason that he didn't know what his mother might be thinking right now. She had watched Shen grow up, but also watched him instigate a massacre; now everyone was telling her that he had reformed, when she'd seen almost nothing of him herself. That was a lot to deal with.

"You're not a monster, Shen," he said, and slowly walked away.

Shen sank down into a sitting position against the side of the house, lowering his head. His eyes were stinging, but he wasn't going to let the tears fall…he was so cold right now that they'd probably freeze on his face, anyway.

Biming appeared at the door to the cottage soon after, calling them all inside. She said that everyone was welcome to come into her home for the night, although she said it with great uncertainty. Xun reluctantly accepted the invitation and went in, but Shen did not. He watched everyone enter the warm house and felt cold and alone and like he deserved it.

As small as the cottage was, it actually had three bedrooms. The two on the lower floor were for patients, and had been made up with two clean bed mats each; the bedroom up on the loft was Biming's, and though it normally contained only one bed, she had added a second one so that she could accommodate all of her visitors. "So, you're sure you don't mind us spending the night?" Po asked again as he saw her fervently working to get everything ready.

"Darling, you're my son!" she exclaimed. "Of course I don't mind!"

"Still, I didn't expect to be followed."

She chuckled. "Well, really, if your family is as big as you say it is, you should have expected that…"

Biming organized the sleeping arrangement efficiently, as if she was used to doing such things. The first room on the ground floor would be occupied by Kurisu and the soothsayer, while the second would be for Xun and Shen (as she was fairly certain that the peacock would slip inside at some point during the night; he couldn't stay out in the cold forever). "As for you, darling," she told Po, "I'm afraid you'll have to sleep with me, as I haven't got any more rooms. I hope you don't mind…"

"I don't mind at all," he responded, smiling, and she took his paw and led him upstairs.

The loft room was by far the smallest bedroom in the house, but it was also the most airy, with nothing but a banister enclosing it on one side. You could see almost everything that was going on downstairs from up here, which Po supposed came in handy if you were a healer and dealing with multiple guests. The blankets on the bed his mother had made up for him smelled as clean as if they had just been freshly laundered. He felt comfortably tired and ready for a good night's rest; all in all, he couldn't imagine a better way to end the day.

"Thanks for all this, Mom," he said, hugging her for what felt like the umpteenth time that day. "I love you…"

"I love you too, my beautiful little jade," she murmured, tenderly smoothing back his fur.

Po blinked. "'Little jade'?" he repeated. She laughed.

"That's what I used to call you when you were a cub," she explained. "Your old name, Bao Yu, means 'precious jade.' So I always called you my little jade. You probably find it too sappy now, though…"

"Nah, I don't care," he said with a grin, and she smiled gratefully.

He fell asleep easily that night, comfortable in his bed and soothed by the sound of his mother's breathing next to him, filled with a sense of complete inner peace from head to toe.

The next morning dawned sunny but cold, the start of a bright, chilly day. Everyone in Lady Biming's cottage on the outskirts of the village was in a decidedly cheerful mood, except for one person…and technically he wasn't IN the cottage at all.

Po felt almost giddy with happiness when Biming awoke him with a loving proclamation of, "Rise and shine, little jade," and insisted on making her favorite breakfast for her, even though she'd initially wanted to cook herself. She soon enough agreed, though, and her son started making up some breakfast spring rolls, asking her to please gather up everyone in the kitchen for the meal.

Biming went to wake up Kurisu, which wasn't much of a problem at all; she loved children and the kitten was quickly warming to her. She was iffier with Xun, remembering how he had almost killed Po on the night of the attack, but fortunately he was already up. He was very nervous when she told him to go to the table, noting the slight frost of iciness in her expression. She didn't look afraid, though; apparently he looked a lot less threatening than Shen these days.

Shen was, of course, the one guest that Biming was dreading to see. She was slightly confused, however, when she realized that he had never come inside last night. He was really that sensitive to not wanting to upset her? Kurisu, the soothsayer, and even Po had all put in good words for the peacock, so of course she wasn't about to disregard the possibility of his reformation completely. She found herself hoping that he had at least found some warmth out there.

So taking a deep breath, she went to the door and popped her head out into the crisp air. "Shen…breakfast."

There was no response.

She waited a moment, then called a bit louder, "Come on, Shen…"

After a few seconds, she saw the peacock's graceful figure emerging from around the side of the house…although he didn't look particularly graceful at the moment. He was walking funny – staggering, by the looks of it, and moving at a painfully slow pace. Her eyes narrowed.

As she watched, Shen stumbled and fell. He didn't get up again, and began to cough. It was an awful sound, bringing to her mind an image of choked-off, fluid-filled lungs…

Without a second thought, Biming hurried over to him. He saw her coming and attempted to stand, but his body proved to be inadequate to the task. She gripped his wing and helped him to his feet, beginning to lead him inside. "Oh dear…I should have known, I should have!..." she muttered to herself. This was just like when he was a child, and he had run off into the rain or the cold without permission; he'd always fall ill and she'd be called in to help him…

"I'm fine," Shen tried to get out, but a cough burst through his words and made them almost unintelligible. Fortunately, Biming understood, but she knew that they were a lie.

"You are not fine, Sheng Li, and you are lying down the moment we get inside!" she declared fiercely, sounding less like a fearful and traumatized woman and more like a stern mother.

She gripped his arm as she led him into the cottage, for if she hadn't been doing so, then he would have pulled away from her and most probably collapsed. As soon as they were inside, Shen let out a harsh, hacking cough that wracked his entire frame. "Shouldn' be helpin' me…don' deserve it…" he mumbled.

Biming rattled around in her wooden chest of medical supplies with her free hand, pulling out a container of cough elixir. "Shen, shut up and" – she stuffed the medicine into his mouth – "drink this."

She half-expected him to spit it out, like he'd done when he was a chick, but instead he gulped it down with a grimace and sagged even more against her. She quickly got him into the room that he was meant to be sharing with Xun and laid him in bed. As she pulled the blankets up over him, he managed to choke out through his coughs, "You d-don' need to help me…"

"That's quite enough," Biming told him crossly, beginning to mix herbs to use as a fever reducer.

"You think I'm…avoiding…medicine?" He coughed again, his body convulsing and shivering. "I know you..d-didn'…want me here…"

"Well, dear," said Biming, "I'll be perfectly honest. You killed my parents, my siblings, my friends, my neighbors, and my village. No, I did not really want you here…" And drawing a handkerchief out of her pocket, she dabbed at his forehead in a gentle way that stood in stark contrast to her words.

"E-exactly…you know I'm a m-m-monster…" he rasped, drawing his blankets tighter as another feverish shiver rolled through him. "So don't help me…"

"Darling, shut up and sleep," she ordered affectionately, looking at him with nothing but sympathy in her green eyes.

"I don't…understand…" he coughed weakly. "You know I'm a monster…you always knew…"

Biming reached over and smoothed his feathers, and Shen closed his eyes wearily. The touch felt good, even though he knew he didn't deserve it. "No, dear. You were not ALWAYS a monster," she said softly. "And you aren't anymore."

"How do you know?" he demanded, and he sounded so pouty and childishly hurt that she had to chuckle.

"Because you're crying, dear," she answered, and dabbed at the tears beneath his eyes that he hadn't even realized were there. "Monsters don't cry."

And Shen realized that she was right, because holding in his pain – not crying – was what had turned him into a psychopath in the first place. Biming had known that, too. He remembered her comforting him during his Nana's illness, telling him that he wasn't a bad omen, pleading with him to not hold in his tears…

He opened his eyes again, and she met them without even a hint of fear anymore. Those red eyes were filled to the brim with tears and horrible guilt, but other than that they were clear. They were not repressing pain and hatred and insanity the way they had been when she'd last seen them. Everything about him seemed to be laid out in his eyes, and she no longer had a doubt in her mind that he'd reformed. "You've already done too much," he whispered.

She shook her head. "No…I've done just enough."

"I c-can never pay back what I owe you…"

"At least you're finally sorry for it…"

Hot tears spilled down his cheeks, and he didn't make a single motion to hide them. "You have n-no idea…"

She smoothed his feathers tenderly, and he winced as a painful cough rose from his chest. "Why are you doing this…" he croaked.

"Shen, I have always cared for you…ever since you were a chick," she told him.

"I kn-know that…but I don't know…why you still feel…compelled to help me…" The words were becoming harder to pull now, held down by sickness and exhaustion (he'd barely slept at all last night).

"Because…" She wrung out her cloth, setting her lips together firmly. "Because I still care for you."

"But why?" Shen pushed himself up, as much as he could, his face tightening in agony, but he managed not to collapse. "I d-don' deserve it….I've done nothing…but hurt you…i-if I die…I deserve…" Suddenly he broke out in an awful coughing fit, crumpling back down on the bed.

Instead of responding, Biming wrapped her arms around him and hugged him.

Shen didn't have the energy to tense up, or even hug her back. He could only slump there despondently in her arms, his face slightly pressed against her shoulder. Tears continued to roll down his face, but somehow, he felt oddly comforted. He breathed in her scent – potent herbal tea and growing crops, just as he remembered. It was nice to know that if everything else had changed, at least Lady Biming hadn't.

He must have started nodding off, because he hardly realized it as Biming laid him down again and tucked him in as if he were a child, and he didn't hear it at all as she murmured lovingly, "It's all right, dear. I forgive you," before closing the door to his room.


	7. The peacock and the kitten

**Keeping a Secret**

_Chapter 7: The kitten and the peacock_

For once, Lady Biming didn't have to worry about farming or spend her day doing backbreaking labor. She was now fully intending to come with her son back to the Valley of Peace as soon as possible, much to his ecstatic delight. Unfortunately, "as soon as possible" wouldn't be as soon he'd hoped it would be, as they had to wait until Shen had recovered sufficiently before departing.

The remainder of the day was spent so enjoyably that the group felt as if the tiring journey they'd made was now a vacation, a refreshing break from the norm. Po talked busily with his mother as the two of them played an endless game of catch-up; he would tell her new stories about his adventures of being the Dragon Warrior, and she would supply him with old memories, tidbits that he had completely forgotten about. She took a break only to explain to the soothsayer about Shen's illness, and the old goat shook her head and muttered about her chick's incredible stubbornness. Unfortunately, this discussion backfired, because when Kurisu heard that Shen had contracted "a nasty case of pneumonia," she burst into tears and ran outside. Biming was rather startled.

"Um, don't worry about her, Mom," Po assured her as he watched his little sister curl up in the grass outside. His words were ironic, seeing as he looked quite concerned himself. "Shen and Kurisu are really tight, that's all. She's just worried about him…"

The soothsayer made various attempts throughout the morning to coax Kurisu back inside, but to no avail. Finally, she decided to just let the girl be. Perhaps Shen could convince her to come in once he woke up.

At around noontime, Po and Lady Biming were cooking lunch together when Biming heard whimpers and unintelligible murmurs coming from the direction of Shen's room. "Oh dear…" she sighed, knowing what was going on.

Whenever Shen was ill and had a high fever, he was prone to having feverish dreams and hallucinations. He had been about five when this disturbing habit had started. Biming clearly remembered being called out to the Tower of the Sacred Flame in the middle of the night – she'd been a much younger woman then, and it had been long before Bao Yu had been conceived, so she'd still been able to make night calls – in order to treat the very sick Prince Sheng Li, who at that time was still a little chick with doubts surrounding his survival. He had been crying and pleading for his mother to come back, while all the while Lady Ah-lam been holding him and hadn't left for a minute. This had gone on and on every time he'd fallen ill for years; Biming had thought that he might outgrow it, but if anything it had become worse as he'd gotten older, since he was accumulating more and more fears and bad memories that came to torment him when his mind was at its most vulnerable. Even when he'd been as old as nineteen, she'd seen him helplessly whimpering and thrashing in bed while clutched in the throes of an illness, unable to bring himself back into reality.

Now, as she heard barely audible mumbles that sounded an awful lot like pleas drifting through the open door to his room, she knew that he had never managed to get away from his unconscious delusions. It occurred to her now that he'd fallen asleep before she had managed to get him to swallow her fever medicine, which meant that his temperature was probably skyrocketing by now. She wiped her hands on a dishrag and made a motion to go back to his room, but the soothsayer intercepted her.

"You stay with your child, and I'll go to mine," she told the panda with a knowing smile. Biming agreed and returned to her cooking, grateful for the help and the opportunity to spend some more time with her son.

Meanwhile, the soothsayer found Shen trembling and thrashing weakly in bed, his face damp with tears and cold sweat. His voice sounded almost obliterated, and his incomprehensible mutters were punctuated by coughs all too often. She got to her knees beside the bed and shook him gently. "Wake up, Shen…"

"Nn…no…don't…" His eyelids fluttered, but his hallucinations must have dragged him down again, because she managed to pick out the words, "No…monster…"

"Darling!" She shook him a bit more forcefully, and she felt his muscles twinge with pain. He grimaced, burrowing his head deeper into his pillow, but it looked like he was waking up.

"Darling, it's all right…" She slipped her hoof beneath his head, propping him up a bit, and his eyes opened a slit.

"N-Nana?" he croaked.

"Shh…I'm here…" she said soothingly, stroking his head feathers.

Shen groaned, not at the touch, but at the realization that he had been hallucinating again. Nowadays it seemed like every time he got sick, he would have a variation of the same dream: he would be trapped watching his past self do terrible things, struggling and crying out and trying to make himself stop, but always unable to move. This time it had taken advantage of his bloody memories of the panda massacre, except it had been all twisted because he had seen himself kill Lady Biming –

"It's okay." The soothsayer squeezed his wing firmly, bringing his mind away from the painful recollection. "I know you had nightmares. Don't think about them."

"I can't…can't seem to get away from them…" He reclined painfully, wincing at his muscle aches. His eyes were threatening to close now, but he wouldn't let them. He couldn't deal with those dreams again, he just couldn't…

"It's a problem you have when you get sick." She was rubbing circles on his stomach now, something that she'd used to do when he was a chick that had never failed to calm him, and he couldn't help but exhale slightly at the comforting touch. "But don't be afraid…everyone is here for you…"

"Not in _there_ you aren't…" He coughed, rubbing his chest, but it didn't hurt as badly as it had before; Lady Biming's medicines must have started to take effect. "Where's the kitty cat? I haven't seen her all morning…"

"She's outside." The soothsayer sighed. "Crying in the grass, last time I saw her…"

"Poor kitty," he said, although he wasn't completely sure why Kurisu would be crying in the first place. "Tell her she can come talk to me, if she wants…"

His Nana smiled and hurried out, and Shen lay sprawled out on the borrowed bed mat and tried not to fall asleep; there wasn't much else he could do. A few minutes later, he heard very familiar scurrying footsteps coming closer, and a crying blue kitten burst into the room. "Hey there, itty bitty kitty," he mumbled hoarsely, a faint smile touching his face.

"Shen – !" Kurisu sobbed, and practically dived into his bed. He winced at the jolt, asking, "W-what's got you so upset?"

"Don't die," she sniffled, and buried into his chest. It hurt, but he didn't say anything about it.

"Relax…I'm not that sick," he told her, then hastily added, "I don't think."

Kurisu sniffed and curled up next to him, the tip of her tail overlapping her little pink nose. He frowned; this wasn't the way that he wanted a happy-go-lucky kitten to be spending her day. "Why aren't you playing with your brother and Lady Biming?"

"I don't wanna play…" She swiped at her teary eyes with a fuzzy paw.

"You shouldn't be sad because I'm sick…"

"But…but…it sounds bad!" She sobbed again.

"I'm used to it. Now, don't mope around so much, or I'll find someone to tickle you." He poked her belly lightly, but she didn't really smile.

"Kurisu…" He heaved a sigh that made his lungs flare in complaint, reaching up to smooth her headfur. This was reminding him too much of the breakdown that she'd had…good gods, had it only been a few days ago? It seemed like ages ago, now. Of course, the past few days had seemed like the universe's twisted science experiment to see how much could change in a short period of time. If someone had asked him, when he woke up on the morning after the breakdown, where he thought he might be in three days, the answer "at Lady Biming's house in a tiny village two days away from the Jade Palace" would have never occurred to him. And yet, here he was…

Remembering what seemed to have begun this whole journey in the first place, he asked Kurisu, "Why don't I tell you a story?"

Her ears perked up a bit, even though there were still tear tracks running down her facial fur. "Y-yes please…"

"Okay. Once upon a time your brother was a fat butterball baby panda, and I had to babysit him…"

It took about two minutes for him to get her loudly giggling and forgetting that she'd ever been upset. She squealed with glee as Shen retold the misadventures that he'd had with the pudgy cub Bao Yu, and she everything he described "adorable," and devised a rather rude commentary that only got her laughing harder. Her reaction wasn't too much different from Po's, actually. Now that Shen thought about it, the events that he'd considered stressful and traumatic at the time were rather funny when you knew who the two people experiencing them were going to grow up to be, and he managed to enjoy the joke this time.

"…I kicked him a ball, and he pounced on it, and I said, 'Hmm, you're pretty aggressive for a fat baby panda. I bet you'd be good at kung fu…"

Kurisu screamed with laughter at the delightful irony, and it was nearly a minute and a half before Shen was able to go on. Neither of them realized that they had attracted the attention of Po and Lady Biming, or that the two pandas were standing just beyond the door, out of sight but listening.

"…then he crawled out the back door and into the fields when I wasn't looking," Shen continued. "He got covered in mud, and when I went looking for him I tripped over him. And I suppose he wanted to wash off, because he dragged me into the spring..."

"Into the water hole?" Kurisu couldn't seem to stop laughing. "Shen…"

"Yes?"

"You don't play in the water hole!"

"We weren't playing! He dragged me in!"

"…a baby."

"A HEAVY baby!"

"But a BABY!"

"Oh, you know I'm not very strong for a kung fu master! Anyway, Lady Biming wasn't very pleased with us…"

"Oh, I _remember_ that," Biming whispered to Po outside. "Lord Jin and Lady Ah-lam came for a visit, and they brought Shen. We left you with him while we went to go look at the rice paddies and crops. I came back to find that you'd pulled Shen into the water hole, clothes and all."

Po had to bite down on his hand quite hard to keep from laughing loudly.

Shen was yawning now, having finished his story, and Kurisu was yawning too. "I'm so tired," murmured the peacock, his eyelids drooping visibly.

"Me, too," agreed Kurisu. "I did a lot of crying, wore me out." She snuggled into Shen's side, and he wrapped a wing around her, tucking her head beneath his chin.

"You sleep, Kurisu," he told her, struggling to keep his eyes from closing. Having her curled up so close to him wasn't making his attempts any easier; it felt like having a favorite plush toy to cuddle. "I'm not going to, or else I'll hallucinate…"

She shook her head. "No…I wanna stay awake to be with you…"

"Growing kittens need their sleep…"

"So do sick peacocks."

Shen agreed with her one hundred percent on that one, but all he said was, "Just get some sleep."

"Fine." She yawned and snuggled up against him closely, curling into a ball like the kitty-cat that she was. In three deep breaths she was fast asleep.

And of course, despite his best efforts, Shen fell asleep as well. He couldn't help it, try as he might; he was still tired and sick, and the presence of his itty bitty kitty soothed him enough that he was willing to risk the nightmares. Physically, he didn't feel much better, but his heart was lighter than it had been in days, and so he slept, taking advantage of this rare moment of peace.

Biming couldn't help but chuckle softly as she looked in on the two of them curled up together. "Oh, they're so _cute_," she whispered.

"Told ya they were really tight," said Po quietly. He was smiling; his little sister looked so sweet that it would have been very hard for him not to.

Biming shut the door as softly as she could. "I'm surprised," she remarked. "Shen is quite sweet with her, and she seemed more than comfortable with him."

Po shrugged. "She's the only one that Shen acts like that with."

"That's because she saved him," stated a new voice.

They both turned, slightly startled, only to see the soothsayer standing behind them. She had both hands placed atop her cane and was smiling, looking altogether pleased with these developments. "Kurisu was Shen's redemption," she explained. "Do you know the story, Biming?"

"A bit, from what Po told me," Biming replied. "He said that Shen kidnapped her, but eventually they grew to like each other."

"I was appalled with Shen when I saw that he had stolen a child…" The soothsayer's eyes misted over behind her spectacles as she recalled that day. Three years seemed both ridiculously close and ridiculously far away. "But then I foretold that she would be his salvation. And of course he didn't believe me, but she was. He reformed because of her; she's the reason why everyone was willing to give him another chance. He loves her so much that he was willing to sacrifice his life to save her." The old goat was beaming now, full of pride for her chick.

"Sacrifice can be the ultimate test of love," Biming agreed softly, and she stretched herself up to kiss her son's forehead. Po smiled.

"I can't thank you enough for forgiving him, Lady Biming." The soothsayer appeared to be a tad embarrassed now. "And for taking care of him like this. Really, he should know better than to spend all night out in the cold…"

"Sheng Li has always been rather hardheaded." Biming smiled wryly. "But then again, I knew that, because I've been taking care of him since he was two days old. Call me sentimental, but I couldn't help but forgive him when I saw how sick he was this morning. I've always found it very hard to stay angry at someone who's crying."


	8. Clearing the air

**Keeping a Secret**_  
Chapter 8: Clearing the air_

_He was face down in the snow, and he could feel the cold and damp seeping into his body, chilling his bones. Every part of his body seemed to be gripped by ice, everywhere except for his heart, which was still throbbing and trying to maintain its warmth. He pushed himself up – but he was so tired, so weak – he just wanted to lie back down and sleep…_

_He was in a forest, and a very dark one. He couldn't see more than a foot in front of him…but he could see the wolves that were charging forward, lunging at him. He tried to cry out, but he had no voice; he tried to get up, but his feathers seemed to have turned to lead, and the ground was sucking him down as if it were covered in viscous quicksand instead of snow. But just when it looked like the wolves were about to tear him to shreds, something barreled into him – attacking him? – no, pushing him out of the way! He rolled hard against a nearby tree, smacking his head, which began to ache dully._

_He looked up, and there was Xun, holding up a torch. Despite the fact that he had just gone up against a pack of rabid-looking beasts, he wasn't hurt at all. He smiled down at the peacock, and there wasn't anything except sympathy in his expression._

"_Why did you save me?" asked Shen, rubbing his sore head._

"_Because you deserved it," replied Xun, and he threw his torch into the forest behind Shen. Instead of starting a fire, though, it illuminated a glowing path that appeared to be made of nothing but golden light. Then he bounded off…or perhaps he simply disappeared, Shen couldn't really tell._

_Shen shakily got to his feet and began to walk down the glowing path. He was still cold and his head still hurt, but he was better off now that Xun had saved him. The forest around him was just as dark and dismal as ever, yet somehow he felt safer on this path. At least he could see now, even though the light was dim._

_All at once, he was aching all over and felt incredibly dizzy, and he collapsed. This must have been his punishment for running off into the woods when it was so cold outside – he was clearly getting sick. But a sickness had never struck him so abruptly before, and now he couldn't even move. He lifted his head a bit and saw, to his shock and horror, that Nana was sprawled out a few yards in front of him. She had collapsed as well._

"_Nana, what are you doing here?" he called out to her._

"_I was looking for you!" she cried. "Why did you leave?"_

"_But I didn't leave! I don't know how I got here!"_

_She extended her hoof weakly and Shen reached for her, but he couldn't get to her and he couldn't move either. Despondent, and losing all hope, he lowered his head back into the cold snow and waited to die…_

"_Hmm! It's all right, dear," hummed a familiar voice. He couldn't open his eyes now, but he felt himself behind scooped up gently, which was when he realized that his body had regressed. He was no longer an adult; now he was just a chick again, a scrawny and sickly chick that was easy to pick up and cradle. And someone was doing just that, rocking him in warm, furry arms. A fingertip touched him gently on the top of the head. Even though he was still freezing cold and his head still hurt, he suddenly felt much better, and he opened his eyes._

_He was back in his old quarters at the Tower of the Sacred Flame, which made no sense, since the palace had been destroyed by him. Then again, he was a chick now, so perhaps he had gone back in time. Lady Biming was holding him, and when she saw that he was awake she smiled and laid him on his bed. Nana was sitting next to him, also smiling, showing no sign that she had ever been sick._

"_Why did you save me?" he asked Lady Biming._

"_Because you deserved it," she told him._

"_No, I didn't. I almost killed you. I killed everyone important to you!" he cried._

"_Yes, but you made it to the path," she told him. "Only people that truly want to be good can make it to the path. Now you're safe. Now you deserve to be saved."_

_He wasn't sure why, but suddenly he felt a lot better – emotionally, anyway, since his head STILL hurt and he was STILL freezing cold. He buried into his blankets and shut his eyes, listening to Lady Biming and Nana speaking in soft, cheerful tones above him. He wasn't afraid anymore; he was at peace…_

It took Shen forever to realize that he was awake now, as reality seemed to pick up exactly where his dream had left off. He was tucked into bed listening to Nana and Lady Biming speaking over him in quiet voices; he was shivering and cold and had an awful headache; and yet despite all that, and despite the fact that he'd just awakened from another hallucination, he felt oddly peaceful.

"…are you sure he's waking up, Biming?"

"Oh, yes. He's definitely coming around. You see, his eyelids are fluttering, I'd hazard a guess that he might be up now. Shen…" Lady Biming's voice had suddenly increased in volume, although it was no less gentle. "We know you're awake, dear. Stop pretending to be asleep." He could tell that they really didn't know that, but the touch of humor still brought a slight smile to his beak, and he managed to open his eyes.

"There you are," Biming said lightly, and dabbed at his forehead with a cool cloth. "Glad to see you're awake. You've been sleeping much too long, dear."

He opened his mouth and tried to ask how long he had been unconscious. Nothing came out except for a hoarse croak.

His Nana helped him to sit up a bit and pressed a warm china cup into his wings. "Drink that," she instructed. He sipped at the liquid and discovered that it was his favorite sweet tea, and its heat felt wonderful as it slid down his sore throat. He drank it up without any hesitation.

"You've been out for three days," Biming told him, and his eyes widened. "Everyone's been a bit worried about you, especially Kurisu. She's always crying and seems to come in here every other minute to make sure you're not dead."

Shen frowned sympathetically, since he still couldn't say anything. A raspy cough rose up from his throat, still obnoxious and still jarring his chest, but much less harsh than it had been before. Apparently those three near-comatose days had done him some good. He felt a bit bad about making Lady Biming take care of him for that long, but of course she would have done that even if he'd been awake. After all, she was both a healer and a mother, and she combined those two professions seamlessly.

He locked eyes with her in order to establish communication, which wasn't easy when you couldn't talk, and mouthed slowly, "_Help me up."_

"I don't think so, Sheng Li," she responded crossly. "You're staying in bed."

He made his eyes pleading and sad and mouthed, _"Please?"_

She rolled her eyes. "How is it that after all this time, you're still such a stubborn chick? All right, we'll see if you can stand, but if you can't you're getting right back in that bed – no buts about it!"

Shen nodded obediently, and Biming gripped his hands firmly, raising him from the bed mat. His legs fumbled as he tried to work with her; his knees felt weak, and his stiff muscles twinged uncomfortably. But finally, he was standing up without support, and he hardly felt dizzy at all.

"Don't overdo it, Shen," said the soothsayer in a warning tone of voice. He shrugged, hopefully conveying to her that he was fine, and began to walk forward.

As soon as he left his room, he spotted Po, Kurisu, and Xun in the kitchen. Po was fruitlessly attempting to cheer up his sniffling little sister, cracking jokes and giving her tickling pokes in the stomach, but nothing was making her smile. Smirking slightly, Shen crept up behind her.

Po's eyes widened when he saw the peacock, and Shen held a finger to his beak and pointed to Kurisu. The panda nodded ever so slightly, holding back a grin.

Shen came forward, knelt down, and, without warning, placed his feathered hands over Kurisu's eyes. She jerked, pulling away from him and spinning around and alarm. When she saw him crouched behind her, smiling and awake, she let out a scream of delight and threw her arms around his neck.

"You ugly chicken!" she half-sobbed as Shen rubbed the top of her head, behind her ears. "You scared me to death! I oughtta kick your ugly chicken butt all over the place!"

He rolled his eyes good-naturedly. Yeah, this was Kurisu, all right. Crying one minute and threatening people the next.

"Good to see you, Shen," Xun spoke up, grinning. "Let me tell you, it hasn't been easy trying to sleep in the same room as you the past few days. You kept talking and crying in your sleep. Even called my name a couple times, I guess I should have given you a hug or something…" He smirked, his ears twitching mischievously.

Shen resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at the wolf, really wishing that he had his voice back now. Both Xun and Kurisu had now noticed his failure to respond to their teasing comments, and were regarding him curiously. "Something wrong, bird brain?" asked Xun.

Shen pointed to his throat and mouthed, _"I can't speak."_

"Oh, cat got your tongue?"

He nodded and pointed to Kurisu, who was beginning to choke him slightly in her tight grip.

Po reached down and gently pried his sister away from the peacock. "Ease up a bit, little sis, all right?"

"You can't even talk, Shen?" Kurisu sniffed, crossing her arms. "And here I thought that things were gonna be more fun now that you're awake!"

Shen smiled, but suddenly his eyelids were feeling weighted down again. The dizziness that he'd thought that he was free from washed over him, and he groaned.

"All right, that's enough." A hand gripped his shoulder gently, and he turned his head sleepily to find Lady Biming standing over him once again. "You're going back to bed, Shen. You need to start regaining your strength so we can leave."

He looked at her questioningly, wondering where it was they were leaving to.

"Home, dear," she explained, seeing his confused expression. "We're going home soon."

Home…Shen shut his eyes, envisioning their return to the Jade Palace. Master Shifu was going to be furious, but perhaps seeing that they had found Lady Biming would make him understand somewhat. Maybe it was his illness playing games with his mind, but he suddenly felt rather homesick; it would be nice to have his own bed, his own room, and go back to the normal training routines again.

But for now, it was nice enough to be able to accept Biming's help without feeling horribly guilty about it, and to not care about how babyishly his Nana was treating him when she sat beside him rubbing his tummy and coaxing him into sleep.

Three days later, the group was well aware that the time to leave could be any day now. Shen was moving around freely and even speaking again, although he couldn't bring his voice much higher than a whisper, and with the assistance of Biming's many medications and herbal remedies, he was quickly regaining his strength. Biming was now beginning to seriously consider the consequences of the fact that she was about to leave what had been her home for the past three decades.

She didn't feel too remorseful, for the simple fact that it really never HAD been her home. For her, home was where she had a family, and she'd spent all of her time in this village quite alone. But now she had her son back, plus one of her oldest and dearest friends, plus the chick she'd taken care of long ago and another child to look after and a whole lot more, if she came with them to the Valley of Peace. Packing up her important belongings felt a little sad but also right. One of the chapters in the story of her life was drawing to a close, but another was about to begin.

The only thing that she was really fretting over now was meeting Po's adoptive father. How was he going to react to seeing her? Did he know why she had been forced to abandon her son? Would she think that she was unworthy of still having her child, since she had left him and not managed to find him in over thirty years?

But she was careful to keep these concerns hidden from Po, who couldn't have been more excited that his mother was coming home with him. He talked to her excitedly for great lengths of time, explaining all of the benefits that she'd have when she came to live with them at the Jade Palace, repeating over and over that she'd never have to work or farm again, "although, you might have to do some healing once in a while, 'cause, y'know, we do get hurt a lot and you're a great healer…"

His enthusiasm never failed to put a smile on her face. Whenever he was around, she was certain that her new home was going to be a great one.

In the interest of Shen's illness, Biming not having the greatest legs, and a lot of crates of personal possessions having to be brought along with them, it was decided that they would take a hike to a riverside village about a half a day away and board a sampan boat that would take them back to the Valley of Peace. The journey would take longer, but be less physically straining. With that in mind, Biming packed lightly, taking only the most important things she owned – which of course included her medical supplies.

Finally, after Shen spent a day playing with Kurisu and showed very few symptoms of exhaustion, the decision was made to leave the following morning. Everyone gathered up the last of their things and prepared parcels of food. Coming here had been a bit of a vacation, an adventure…but not one of them was unhappy to be returning home at last.

It was that evening that Po decided that the time had come to clear the air with Shen once and for all.

The peacock was sitting outside, lazily reclining against the side of the cottage and watching Kurisu pounce on insects in the grass, when Po approached him. "I wanted to say thank you," the panda started awkwardly.

Shen jumped slightly, not expecting to have seen anyone there, and turned his head towards the panda in disbelief. "_Thank_ me?" he repeated in his still-distressed voice. "For what?"

"For telling me that my mom might be alive. If you hadn't talked to me that day, then I never would have known to come and find her…"

"If it wasn't for me, then you never would have been separated from her in the first place," retorted Shen bitterly, looking away.

"True…" said Po slowly. "But I also probably never would have been the Dragon Warrior."

Shen opened his beak, then shut it.

"Stuff happens for a reason," Po continued. "Even bad things that happened in the past can lead to a better future, but we can't dwell on what-ifs. Remember when I told you after I threw that cannonball at your boat? Stuff in the past doesn't matter – the only thing that matters is what you choose to be now."

"So you're telling me that I need to…" Shen cleared his throat, and his voice managed to become a bit louder. "Let go of everything from the past?"

"Er…you're not the only one who needs to do that." Po was rubbing the back of his neck now. "I know I'm kind of a hypocrite, for telling you that and then…not letting go of everything from the past for a really long time. But I have now!" he added quickly, and smiled. "The fact that I saw my mom forgive you…well, it kind of made me wonder why I wasn't doing the same thing."

Shen didn't say anything. He couldn't.

"So, what do you say?" Po extended his hand expectantly. "Are we friends? Or, at least – allies, teammates, united kung fu masters or whatever?"

Shen slowly stood up, taking a deep breath that made his lungs protest slightly. This was definitely that troublesome cub that he'd babysat so long ago. Po was just as optimistic, just as naïve, and just as innocent as Bao Yu.

He met the offered hand with his wing, and they shook on it. "Whatever you say, Dragon Warrior," he agreed.


	9. Homecoming

**Keeping a Secret**

_Chapter 9: Homecoming_

Bihai, the pig who ran the commercial sampan boat that ferried passengers from Gongmen City to the river just outside of the Valley of Peace, had shared his vessel with many odd people. He had serviced travelers with odd cargo and even odder stories to tell, dreamy-eyed artisans that stared off into space no matter how much he'd tried to talk to them, and a few particularly roughed-up merchants who he'd been fairly sure were actually pirates. But never in all his years had he seen two pandas, an albino peacock, a wolf, a goat, and a cat requesting to board for a voyage together.

At first he was tempted to say no. After all, there were so many of them, and that wasn't even mentioning the four heavy-looking crates that were stacked around their feet. Then he realized that one of the two pandas, the younger male, was the Dragon Warrior. After that, refusal didn't seem like such an intelligent option.

The Dragon Warrior and the other panda, a much older female, appeared to be related. It didn't take a genius to see that they had similar round facial structures, and the same bright green eyes. The peacock, who looked vaguely familiar to Bihai, didn't look like he was entirely well; he was shivering as if the morning air was freezing cold instead of just a little bit chilly, and had a blanket clutched around his shoulders like a cloak. Despite his listlessness, the cat – more of a kitten, really, as she was the youngest in the group by far – was running circles around his feet and chattering excitedly, although he wasn't responding by doing much more than smiling and nodding at her. The wolf was making impatient faces while balancing two crates in his arms, and the goat was watching all of them, smiling and seemingly amused.

"We need to get as close to the Valley of Peace as possible," the Dragon Warrior was telling Bihai. "Please, some of us can't walk really far, especially with all this cargo…"

"Well…" Bihai hesitated, then finally submitted. "All right. I can't exactly say no to the Dragon Warrior, after all."

"Thanks so much!" The pig had his hand pumped so vigorously that his arm was nearly dislocated. "We'll tip you well for this, really!" And then the Dragon Warrior worked on boarding everyone and everything, leaving Bihai to rub his sore shoulder and wonder what he'd gotten himself into.

The boat seemed to be lurching dangerously under their combined weight when they were all on board, but to be fair, they were all quite tolerable passengers. Bihai was honestly surprised at how respectfully they acted towards him. They mostly talked amongst themselves in cheerful-sounding voices, and if he ever addressed them to ask them a question, they were rather polite and upbeat when they answered it. He soon began to relax, expertly guiding his sampan boat down the rivers and tributaries.

"It'll take about three days to get us there," he told them. "Then you'll still have a half day's walk or so to actually get into the Valley of Peace. Wish I could get you there faster, but water doesn't always work the way you want it to, you know?"

The only one of them who didn't seem to be talking much was the vaguely familiar albino peacock, and Bihai soon came to understand that this was because the peacock didn't have much of a voice at the moment. He spoke up a few times, and could barely be heard at all. The other passengers certainly spoke to him a lot, though, especially the kitten. She always addressed him as "Shen."

It took Bihai a while to realize where he'd heard the name "Shen" before and why the peacock seemed familiar, and when he did he wound up gripping the edge of the boat for dear life, afraid that he would faint.

"Uh, what's wrong?" the Dragon Warrior asked him. "Seasick or something?"

"That peacock…" Bihai gasped, looking towards the avian in question. "Are you calling him _Shen_? As in, _Lord Shen of Gongmen City_?"

"Uh," said the Dragon Warrior.

Shen's crest flattened, and the only sounds he made were a lot of coughing and throat-clearing noises.

Bihai didn't press the issue any further, but he did decide to get a bit a background on the rest of the passengers. He learned that the Dragon Warrior's name was Po, and that the other panda, named Biming, was his mother; that the kitten was named Kurisu ("Odd name, it sounds Japanese." "She IS Japanese.") and that she was Po's adoptive little sister; that the goat was named Min Yun, and that she was a soothsayer; and that the wolf's name was Xun, and that was all that was said about him. Bihai had a bad feeling that if the peacock really was Lord Shen, then the wolf was probably his right-hand man, the infamous Wolf Boss. All of them had been away for just over a week, and were now heading home.

"May I ask what you were doing so far from the Valley of Peace?" inquired Bihai.

"Uh, sorry, can't tell you," Po answered. "It's very official, kung fu warrior-type stuff."

Kurisu rolled her eyes and said, "Yeah, that's what it was."

"Do you think that anyone's been worried about us?" croaked Shen, clearing his throat.

"Nah," responded Po. "You did tell Master Shifu where you guys were going, right?"

Shen stared at him. "You mean…you didn't?"

Po squeezed his eyes shut and groaned loudly.

"Oh, don't give me that!" declared Shen, although it was hard to sound angry when you had such a raspy voice. "You just ran off and didn't tell Master Shifu? As far as I've heard, Kurisu only knew you were leaving by accident – "

"Well, sorry, but I had other things on my mind, as you very well know!"

"So you're saying that I SHOULDN'T have told you that your mother wasn't dead?"

"All I'm saying is that the person who should have thought of telling Master Shifu should have been the one who wasn't emotionally compromised…"

"And you don't think that I was emotionally compromised after telling you that?"

"Well, not as much as – "

"Would you two kindly shut up for a moment?" Biming interrupted suddenly, and they both fell silent with surprise. "Thank you."

"You both made the same error; you are both responsible for the consequences," said the soothsayer, tapping her walking stick against the floor of the boat (which was something that she had done when Shen was a chick in order to intimidate him).

Shen rolled his eyes and rasped, "Oh, as if you weren't right there as well…"

Acting as if she hadn't heard him, she continued, "We are going to be on this boat for three days, and everyone's going to be in rather close quarters. It seems senseless to me to start out with a needless argument."

Po and Shen grudgingly agreed and apologized to each other, and conditions became peaceful once again.

By the end of the three days, everyone was feeling a bit strained and stressed. Kurisu especially was looking for room to stretch her legs, and was irritating everyone else on board, including Bihai. The soothsayer apologized for this, saying that the kitten was a growing girl and a bit hyperactive. Bihai assured her that it was no trouble, but he secretly grumbled about it when no one else could hear him.

At long last, they reached the port closest to the Valley of Peace, and Bihai bid his odd group of passengers goodbye. He was given a generous payment for his services as they disembarked, which put him in a good enough mood to wave to them as he sailed away. They didn't notice, however; they were too busy trying to make sure that nothing had fallen out of the crates, and getting ready for their half-day trek.

"You're going to love it here, Mom," Po said excitedly, snacking on some of the bread he'd brought with him. "Everyone's gonna be so happy to meet you…"

"Nn..." Biming's voice was uneasy.

He frowned. "What's the matter?"

"I…well…" She didn't want to destroy her son's buzz, but her anxiety was in full force now that they had almost reached their goal.

"You can tell me…"

"Your…dad is here…right?" she asked carefully.

"Yeah, that's right," Po replied just as carefully. He didn't want to refer to Mr. Ping as his "adoptive dad" simply because it felt like an insult to him, especially now that he had his biological mother. They were both his parents, and each one felt just as real as the other to him; the last thing he wanted to do was make his father feel inferior.

Biming was looking down, fidgeting with her hands a bit. "I don't want to impose…"

"Mom, you're not imposing!" exclaimed Po. "You're my mom, and he's my dad! You're both my family!"

"But he doesn't even know me!" Biming cried.

"I know…" He took a deep breath. "I was thinking that before we go up to the Jade Palace, we could stop by the noodle shop…you know, so you guys could meet each other…"

Her response to this was to look even more anxious.

"You'll get along," Po assured her.

"…oh, all right," she sighed. She had known that she would have to meet the goose who had taken her son in at some point; there was no sense in prolonging it.

Their journey ended up taking a little longer than half a day. As she'd said, Biming had very bad legs, but that would have barely slowed them down; the real delays came whenever Shen had a particularly bad coughing fit and was ordered by the healer to sit down and rest awhile. Add that to the fact that all of the able-bodied group members had heavy crates to carry, and they didn't reach the borders of the Valley until around sunset.

For Biming, the time they spent walking seemed to move quickly and slowly at the same time. But when they arrived at the edge of the village, the time it took for them to reach Mr. Ping's noodle shop seemed amazingly, inordinately fast.

The noodle house had closed early that night, as it had every day for the past week and a half. Mr. Ping was sitting despondently in the kitchen with his head propped up in his wings, gazing sadly at the various paintings lining the shelves. There were the older ones, of just him and Po, and the newer ones, that included Kurisu as well. His children…his missing children.

This was a bit like the time, over three years ago now, when Po had gone off to Gongmen City in order to save China. For the whole time that he'd been gone, Mr. Ping had been sick with worry. His son was facing horrible danger and might never return, he had known that much. But that was the thing: he had KNOWN that time. This time, he knew absolutely nothing, and what was more, no one else did either.

Although the Valley of Peace still had the Furious Five around to protect it, the disappearance of the Dragon Warrior had not gone unnoticed by anyone. What's more, he wasn't the only one missing. Master Shen was gone; Kurisu, a kung fu student, was gone; two other Jade Palace residents were gone, not leaving any message, not telling anyone what had happened to them. Everyone was assuming the worst. Master Shifu, the Five, and of course Mr. Ping were desperately anxious to know where everyone had gone. Every search they'd mounted had come up blank – this was a very unsettling mystery.

As Mr. Ping sat there, wishing that he could hear his children's voices, one of his children's voices suddenly sang out:

"Daaaaddy!"

He spun around faster than anyone would have thought possible of a goose his age. Poking her fuzzy little head through the exterior entrance to the kitchen was…

"Kurisu!" he cried, charging towards her and wrapping her up in a tight hug, tears already springing to his eyes. Kurisu giggled and nuzzled against him like the kitty-cat that she was. After several seconds, though, when her father showed no sign of letting her go, she piped up, "Um, Daddy, you're squishing me…"

"Oh! I – I'm sorry!" Mr. Ping hurriedly stepped back, haphazardly wiping at his eyes. His daughter smiled at him, and he tearfully smiled right back. Which was when he noticed that behind her, stooping over to get through the doorway, was…

"PO!"

Mr. Ping let go of all of his reservations and launched himself at his son. Po couldn't help but laugh at this, immediately wrapping his arms around his father. "Hey, Dad."

"Son! You had me…worried…sick!" Mr. Ping sobbed, not releasing his grip on the panda's big belly for a second.

"Uh, yeah, sorry about that…" Po gently set the old goose on the ground. "Something…supremely weird came up, and we all kind of left on short notice. Or, er…no notice."

"You all left? Supremely weird? Short notice?" Mr. Ping peered out the kitchen's front window and saw that the rest of the missing Jade Palace residents were also outside, huddled in a close group in the dining area. "You mean you all went together?" Mr. Ping shouted in disbelief.

"It was kind of an…unexpected road trip," Po explained.

"A very awkward, unexpected road trip," Shen contributed. His voice was still a bit rough around the edges, but was at more or less normal volume now.

Mr. Ping eyed the peacock suspiciously. He knew that Shen had been the one who had tried to take over China a few years ago (despite the fact that everyone had initially tried to hide this), and even though everyone else was confident in the fact that he had reformed, Mr. Ping wasn't sure if the former villain wasn't to be blamed for the mystery disappearance. "What do you have to do with this?" he asked crossly.

Shen looked at Po, who looked back at him. In almost perfect unison, they said, "It's a long story."

"But, um, here's the thing, Dad…" Po looked towards his father expectantly. Mr. Ping was sniffling, trying to contain his tears of joy and relief. "There's…someone I want you to meet."

"Oh, new friend of yours?" Mr. Ping was hastily scrubbing the tears out of his eyes.

"Not exactly. Come outside, will you?..."

Po took the goose's wing and led him out into the dining area, illuminated by the last of the sun's rays. Mr. Ping looked around, mentally noting that everyone who had vanished was present and accounted for here. He counted one, two, three, four, five figures in the fading light –

Wait a minute. Was there a sixth figure as well?

Someone else had been intentionally waiting out of the view of the kitchen, and was now standing very rigid and still with their hands clasped in front of them. Po was leading him towards this someone, and Mr. Ping saw with equal parts confusion and shock that it was another panda, an older female panda. But hadn't they all been wiped out when…

"Dad, this is…my mom."

Despite the fact that they were entirely different species and had never met each other before in their lives, Lady Biming and Mr. Ping were complete mirror images of each other at that moment. Neither one moved; neither one could think of something decent to say.

"…Mom," Po prompted, once he saw that they weren't going to start socializing on their own, "This is my dad."

After a long second's hesitation, Biming stepped forward and gave a small, shaky bow. "H-hello, Mr. Ping," she stammered.

"Um…" Mr. Ping had to swallow several times before he could manage a mutter of, "H…hello…"

There was another prolonged silence.

"So you're Po's…real mother," Mr. Ping commented shakily, his voice conducting every bit of the terror that he felt. This wasn't possible; Po didn't have a real mother. They had been through this before. Po's parents were gone, and Po was his, Mr. Ping's, son –

"And you're his…goose dad," Biming remarked in the exact same tone of voice.

"Yes, I…" The smile that touched his bill was beyond nervous. "I-I've raised him ever since I found him behind the restaurant…in a radish basket…"

Her breath caught. "The radish basket…" she murmured, her voice barely audible, a paw at her heart.

"Y-yes, when he was a baby…" Mr. Ping wasn't entirely sure how to interpret her response. That was when he noticed that there were tears in her eyes.

"Thank you s-so much," Biming whispered.

Beyond taken aback at this, he got out, "Um…y-you're welcome…"

"You saved him," said Biming, her voice not nearly as faint or trembling now. The anxiety in her eyes had now been more or less dominated by admiration and gratitude.

"Well, I…I couldn't leave him out there…" Mr. Ping sputtered.

"Not everyone would have taken him in…" Without warning, she reached over and enveloped him in a hug. He was so startled that he couldn't budge an inch…although that may have had something to do with the fact that he was somewhat smushed against her.

Biming released him and stepped back, smiling sweetly now. Mr. Ping brushed off the front of his clothes and smiled back. He was having a very hard time not liking this panda; she was a hugger, just like Po. There was just one thing that was still bothering him, though…

"You're not…her to take him back, are you?" he asked timidly.

"Oh, no, no, no," Biming assured him, her smile never faltering. "It's not like that at all."

"I just thought you guys should meet each other, cause, y'know…" Po stepped forward, swelling with pride and happiness that this had turned out well after all. "You're both my parents."

"And it is an honor to meet you, Mr. Ping," said Biming.

"Well, it is an honor to meet you too, Ms….uh…" Mr. Ping suddenly realized that he wasn't even sure what her name was.

"Biming," she offered, nodding her head.

"It is an honor to meet you, Ms. Biming," he declared, going right back to his usual chipper self. "Will you be coming to stay here in the valley?"

"Yes, I will," she answered cheerfully, no longer worried about being accepted into a new home.

"Well, feel free to stop by here any time you like!" He clapped his wings together. "In fact, would you care for some soup right now? You must all be very hungry after travelling all day!"

"We'd love too, Dad," Po interjected, his stomach growling a bit, "but we can't right now. We've gotta go up and tell Master Shifu that we're back…"

"Oh, of course…" Mr. Ping appeared to be quite disappointed at this.

"We'll come back soon, though," Po promised. "Really soon. Like, tomorrow!"

The old goose nodded, brightening. "Tomorrow! Wonderful, wonderful…I'll prepare a feast for us. Oh, I'm so happy that you two are back…" He gave a final hug to each of his adopted children, and they both rolled their eyes good-naturedly. Everyone else headed to the archway, preparing for the hike up to the Jade Palace.

"Goodbye, Mr. Ping!" Biming waved to him, grinning. "Tomorrow you'll have to tell me all about what Po was like while you brought him up!"

"Mooommm!" Po complained.

"Oh, I've got plenty of stories to tell!" a laughing Mr. Ping called back to her.

"DAAAAAD!" Po whined even louder. Everyone except Shen laughed, and even the peacock had to crack a smile.

When at last all of the goodbyes had been finished, Kurisu stifled a loud groan. "Master Shifu's gonna kill us, isn't he?" she moaned.

Shen nodded without saying a word – not because he didn't have his voice back, but because he was wondering if he had indeed made himself less indebted…or more.


	10. Explanations and the end

**Keeping a Secret**

_Chapter 10: Explanations and the end_

About half of the group was quiet and somber as they solemnly marched up the steps towards the Jade Palace. Shen and Xun had the feeling that they were about to get kicked out, as they would naturally be the ones to get the blame for a disappearance like this, and Kurisu was paralyzed in fear of Master Shifu's bamboo rod; she was hiding behind Shen, with her tail tucked between her legs and shielding her rear. She kept tripping over the peacock's long train, and when he finally snapped at her to stop it, she shrank back and settled for just walking at his side. He didn't think that he'd be in any position to protect her from punishment, though.

Po, Lady Biming, and the soothsayer didn't seem too concerned about what would happen when they got home. On the contrary, Lady Biming seemed the most cheerful she'd been since leaving her old village, and Po was too excited to be scared. Shen detested the way that his Nana looked so smug, though. She clearly knew that she would be the last person that anyone would reprimand for anything, and was probably still convinced that their abrupt departure was Shen and Po's fault despite the fact that she had tagged along uninvited. Well, that was his Nana for you. And if he dared to point this out to her, he'd probably just get threatened with the switch again.

Going up the stairs was torturous for him. Normally Shen didn't care much about the hike up, seeing as he would always fly, but if there was one painful lesson he had learned from being sick so often, it was _"Never fly while recovering from an illness." _A painful number of crashes from midair blackouts or near-blackouts had taught him that. So he was stuck with trudging behind everyone else, although he was really in no condition to walk so far either. Absolutely everyone was huffing and puffing when they reached the top, but none so much as Shen, who was back to coughing after every other deep breath. He thought that he probably had a low-grade fever, too.

He would have liked nothing more than to go to his room and lay down, but they had the grandmaster to deal with first. And clearly they were going to waste no time in getting punished, because no sooner had they all stopped at the top of the stairs to catch their breath when Po dashed forward, still panting, and eagerly called, "Master Shifu!"

Shifu had been standing out on the front steps of the palace, probably having heard their not-exactly-silent ascent. His expression was unreadable from this distance, but they all clearly heard him bark out, "PANDA!" and start running towards them with his near-impossible speed. He raced towards Po, looking almost as if he were about to hug his student, and…

_WHACK!_

"Owww!" Po stumbled back, instinctively rubbing the spot on his enormous stomach where the bamboo rod had connected. "Master Shifu – I can explain!"

_WHACK! WHACK!_

Po was hit again, but he managed to block the second strike. "Wait! Master Shifu – you'll never guess what happened!" he cried.

Shifu snarled. "I have no words to describe how angry I am right now, panda!" he shouted, getting in another hard smack with the rod. "You – have – been – gone – for – TWO – WEEKS!" And as he said each word he inflicted another blow upon Po, who managed to block or dodge most of them. Turning to everyone else with venomous rage in his eyes, he growled, " I am VERY disappointed with you – ALL of you!"

Shen, Xun, and Kurisu all immediately bowed to their knees and dropped their heads. The soothsayer had the decency to lower her head and look shamefaced, at least. Biming looked like she didn't know what she was supposed to do or what was expected of her. Fortunately, Shifu had taken no notice of her yet.

"Two weeks!" the red panda ranted, pointing his bamboo rod at Po. "YOU, going off somewhere without telling me a thing! YOU – " The tip of the rod was pointed at Shen now, who flinched. "Taking a student – a CHILD – from the palace unattended and without permission!"

"She wasn't unattended," Shen tried to say, but he was interrupted by a murderous glare and an inconvenient cough bursting from his beak.

"And where's that insubordinate cat?" Shifu demanded.

"Hiding behind me," wheezed Shen, whose lungs and throat were closing up from fear as well as physical exertion.

Growling, Shifu dragged the kitten out into the open, where she whimpered pathetically and made herself look as adorable and helpless as possibly. Her master was not to be placated by the act, and he readied his rod.

"Shen, save me!" Kurisu pleaded.

Shen shook his head. "You're in trouble, itty bitty kitty," he managed to get out.

"You're next, peacock." Shifu drummed his fingers against the rod thoughtfully. "You're older than the kitten and panda, so…run 10 times up and down the thousand steps!" He gestured extravagantly to the direction they had just come from.

Shen's eyes widened, his face going gaunt. He began to suck in almost hyperventilating breaths, which whistled as they pulsed up and down his throat. There was no way he would be able to survive that…

"Um, excuse me," Biming piped up cautiously. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea for a punishment right now. Shen has pneumonia, so running up and down the steps…" She trailed off.

Master Shifu blinked, his eyes settling on the female panda for the first time. "Who are you?" he asked suspiciously.

She bowed. "My name is Lady Biming."

"She's my mom," Po added, rubbing at a particularly sore spot on his arm.

"Lady Biming?" Shifu sounded incredulous, but not angry in the least bit. "Why, I haven't seen you since…"

Biming's brow furrowed. "You've seen me before – oh!" Suddenly realization dawned on her face. "That's right, I remember now! That was over thirty years ago…"

"Wait a second…" Po was rapidly looking back and forth between his mother and his master. "You guys know each other?"

"Not exactly." Master Shifu hesitated, his rage seeming to be momentarily curbed. "In her heyday, Lady Biming was known as one of the greatest healers in China…"

"I wouldn't go that far," muttered Biming, although she looked rather pleased.

"Master Oogway was friends with her. Long ago, I was traveling to Gongmen City with him, and we made a stop in her village. We saw her newborn son …" His eyes flitted up to Po.

"You didn't know her son was me, did you?" asked Po.

"No…only now is it dawning on me. You were Bao Yu then."

He nodded in confirmation, turning the name around in his mind not for the first time. _Bao Yu_…in a way, it was almost fitting for him to have two names, as if one was his past self and one his current self. Bao Yu was the baby that had grown up in a village of pandas with his biological parents, caused some trouble for the prince of Gongmen City, and lost everything in a horrible catastrophe; Po was the adult panda who was still a child at heart, but was also a kung fu master, the Dragon Warrior, and someone who had a huge and extensive family.

"It's all coming back to me now. You were only a week old at the time…cute little fluff ball. What on earth happened to you," he muttered.

"Hey, that was mean!" Po protested.

"But that's beside the point." Shifu whirled around, jabbing his rod in Po's face. "You have thirty seconds to explain why in the gods' name you thought it was a good idea to leave for two weeks and not tell anyone. GO."

"That wasn't – ! I mean it's – !" Po took a deep breath. "Okay, so, the morning of the day that I left, peacock here told me that he hadn't killed my mom, so she might be alive."

Shen's crest flattened, and he didn't look up to see if he was being stared at. He hadn't expected any of this to happen when he'd made his confession. One second he'd been blissfully ignorant of the fact that Po and Bao Yu were one and the same, and the next, he had braved his phobia of looking into his former enemy's eyes, and…then they were off. And that had only been two weeks ago. Good gods, now it felt like an entire past era of his lifetime.

"And I just…I can't…I can't describe how I felt!" Po blurted. "That whole day, all I could think about was finding my mom. You remember how absent I was in training, Master! And finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I knew I had to leave."

"You should have told me what was going on!" shouted Shifu.

"But you would have thought I was going nuts! Everyone else did…"

Shifu growled. "You should never, ever put words in my mouth, panda. And what – you convinced everyone else to come along with you? THEY didn't seem to think you were crazy!"

Here Shen slowly got to his feet and interrupted, "Po didn't ask us to go anywhere with him, Master Shifu. We went after we realized he was missing."

"And didn't tell me!" the grandmaster got out through clenched teeth.

"It was very abrupt." Shen coughed, clearing his throat; at least he was breathing more easily now. "Kurisu came to my room that night and told me that her brother was leaving. Apparently, she'd caught him on the way out, and he'd told her that he was going to find his mother. She DID think he was crazy, actually. But I didn't, because of what I had told him before. So I submitted myself to the two of us trying to catch up with him…if I'd forbid her, she would have snuck out afterwards and probably gotten into mortal peril, as you very well know."

"…true," Shifu grumbled in reluctant agreement. "Continue."

"After that, Nana and Xun…" He glanced back at where the soothsayer and the wolf were both watching the conversation shamefully. "…followed me. We caught up to Po later, at Lady Biming's house. Please understand, Master Shifu, I had to go…to protect Kurisu, and to pay off another part of my debt. I had to…"

Shifu's face was tight, and his grip around the bamboo rod was so tight that it looked like it was about to snap in half. "That would have been fine, but none of you told me!"

"We're sorry…" said Shen. "We were trying to catch up with Po…"

"And PO never – !"

The peacock shrugged. "I don't know how to explain that…"

Master Shifu turned to his student. The anger in his eyes hadn't wavered, but now there was something else fighting towards the surface. Pain?

Po lowered his head. "I'm sorry, master…"

For a moment, Shifu stood there, breathing heavily. Then, without a word, he abruptly turned and stormed off.

For several seconds, everyone just stood there, all unsure of what had happened…except for Po, who hadn't lifted his head. Then Biming told Shen that he should go lie down, and he welcomed the opportunity with open arms. Gradually, the rest of them all returned to their rooms as well, glad to be home at last but still unsettled over the fact that no one had really been punished.

Lady Biming managed to find Master Shifu in order to tentatively ask about her living arrangements. He called up a weak smile for her and said that it was lovely to see her again, he didn't blame her for what had happened, and that she was welcome to stay; there were only two extra rooms left in the bunkhouse, but she was welcome to either one of them. So she selected a room, opened up her crates, and began the long task of moving in and settling down.

Po's buzz had been officially killed; seeing Master Shifu so upset had been enough to put cold flutters in the pit of his stomach. That night, he cooked a very late supper and went around greeting the rest of the Furious Five and introducing them to his mother, but his heart wasn't in it. He knew that he would have to apologize before the night was over, or else he wouldn't be able to get a wink of sleep. Finally, he nervously went outside, hoping to find his master and reconcile.

Shifu was sitting beneath the Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom, not meditating and not trying to, just glaring into the night. He heard the heavy footfalls making their way towards him long before they reached him, but he didn't turn around.

"Master Shifu?" Po spoke up cautiously. "Master Shifu, I just wanted to say again that I'm sorry I let you down, and if you wanna punish me, I can take it…"

"I've beaten you enough…" Master Shifu stood, although he still didn't turn around. "And it won't get out my anger."

"I didn't mean to make you mad, master…"

"Well, you did, panda."

"But wouldn't you have done the same thing if you'd suddenly found out that someone who meant everything to you, who you thought was dead, might be alive?" Po pleaded.

"I DID do something similar when I was younger, but I told my master!"

"If I had told you, you would have thought I was crazy!"

"No, I wouldn't have!"

"Everyone else did…"

The red panda finally turned to look at his anxious student, keeping his eyes narrowed but a notch softer than a glare.

"What you did was wrong, Po," he growled.

"You know the last thing I'd ever want to do is disappoint you, Master Shifu," said Po desperately. "I just had to take a chance this once! I didn't think I'd be gone for as long as I was…"

Shifu snarled and clenched his fists, but that didn't stop the slight beads of dew from forming in the corners of his eyes. "You don't know what you put me through! Having to wait for two weeks not knowing if my children were dead or alive! Not knowing where they were – where YOU were!"

Far beyond shock, Po stammered, "I…I never thought you'd…be that worried…"

"Well, you don't know me well enough, then!" Shifu wiped the dampness out of his eyes angrily. "When I sent you all to Gongmen three years ago, I was worried even knowing where you were, and not knowing – !"

"But I didn't think you ever got worried…" Po whispered.

Shifu's ears lowered immediately, his eyes widening in hurt and shock.

"You…you always seemed like a super strong and awesome master..." Po continued tensely. "You were always chill about everything…I've never seen you really worried."

Shifu sighed softly, looking towards the ground. "You really know nothing about me, panda…"

"Well, you're kinda…closed up."

"Not as much as I was…"

"As you were when?" Po asked. "When I first met you?"

"Exactly…" Shifu raised his eyes again, visibly calmer. "I care about all of my students, but you especially. I'm surprised I didn't have a heart attack these past two weeks. Although my chest was hurting…probably anxiety."

Po wasn't sure what to say; all words seemed to have suddenly deserted him. So instead, he took a page out of his mother's book, and reached down and hugged the grandmaster.

Shifu stiffened, and his first impulse was to slip away. He knew he COULD slip away, he had done it before. But for some reason, he let the embrace go on this time. There were worse things than being hugged by someone who you hadn't seen in two weeks.

Eventually, Po pulled away, and was happy to see that his master had a familiar wry smile on his face. "You are forgiven," he stated. "Now, dismissed."

"Thanks, Master Shifu!" Po hurried away, grinning, feeling that same sense of contented tiredness he'd had at the first night at Lady Biming's house. Once again, he couldn't imagine a better way to end this stressful today. And tomorrow was going to be even better. He had his mother…he had the rest of his family…and his inner peace seemed somehow rejuvenated, stronger than it had ever been before. Of course, trials such as this were supposed to make you stronger. And now…

And now, everything was perfect.

For several weeks after Lady Biming's arrival in the Valley of Peace, Mr. Ping was secretly concerned that he'd become a third wheel now that his son had his real mother back. But in fact, exactly the opposite seemed to happen. Po made a point of seeing his father at every opportunity, bringing Biming so that the two of them could interact and get to know each other better. After three weeks, the two of them found that they had become very good friends, united by a common cause: caring for their son. At first it had been somewhat awkward, with both of them being parents from two different families, but they learned to work around it. Eventually, they forgot that things had ever been uncomfortable between them at all.

Po didn't go back on his word to Shen that the air had been cleared between them, and eventually the last of the awkwardness vanished between them as well…not forgotten, but rendered hopelessly obsolete. They weren't really friends, per se, but it became infinitely easier for the two of them to cooperate. Shen felt like he had been forgiven at long last, and this made him much more relaxed and content. His nightly meditations were so much simpler to get into. Sometimes he wondered if what he was feeling was inner peace, and he figured that someday he'd try that Zen technique with a drop of water…or deflect a cannonball. Whichever came first.

And life in the Valley of Peace became peacefully once again.

The tale of the struggle between the peacock and the panda seemed to have come to an end at long last. They had given up on hostility, given up on tenseness, and Shen realized with somewhat of a shock that he had tied up all of his loose ends. Not being able to reform, stabbing Xun, leaving Lady Biming alive…everything had been cleared away. Of course there were still terrible things that he had done in the past, but he accepted the fact that he had to leave them alone. They couldn't be changed, and it was senseless to try. There were better things that he could be doing – after all, he still had his future.

He knew when he was. He was in the moments of enjoying the present and letting go of the past, and having a family to care about and protect. He had an itty bitty kitty who was pleased with him, and a Nana who was proud of him for turning things around, once and for all.

He knew who he was. He was Master Sheng Li, a formerly insane and genocidal lord who had devoted his life to repaying his debt, and now had the chance to sit back and relax, because it had now been repaid completely.

And most of all, he knew where he was…he was home.

THE END

* * *

_A/N - All right, that's it. I'm done. This is the final chapter of the final story. There will be no more continuations for a while, for three reasons:_

_1. I'm burned out from writing so much. Yesterday was the first day in forever that I didn't do a daily update, which tells you how burned out I am._

_2. I don't have any more significant sections of the RP to turn into stories._

_3. Apparently there's a lack of interest. People with very similar stories post their fics here and get an obscene amount of reviews; I post mine and get next to none. If No One Will Listen only got 28 reviews, Long Shot only got 23, and Keeping a Secret, despite being the longest of the three, only has 18 so far. 28 is about what most people get for their first five chapters. So, because no one cares and I seem to have a talent for repelling any and all attention, I don't see any reason to continue the series._

_Seeing as this is the last update to the series, you really should review...although I know you won't. My apologies to the three whole people who actually cared.  
_


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